An open-loop stepper motor driver based on FPGA

In motion control systems, stepper motors are widely used and the stepper motor driver is mainly implemented using a DSP (Digital Signal Processor). Using the DSP allows the control algorithm to be easily applied. Both coding and debugging processes can be rapidly performed. The DSP based driver’s exhibit good performance; they are reliable, precise, and responsive. However, when mass production is needed, FPGA (Field-programmable Gate Array) based drivers are preferred since the FPGA based design is compatible with conversation to an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). Previous studies proposed FPGA based drivers but the quality is still limited because of the difficulty of handling complex computations in the FPGA. Nowadays, with the improvement of FPGA techniques, it is possible to perform various computations in the FPGA so it can be used instead of the DSP in motor driver design. This paper presents an open loop driver based on the FPGA. This driver can perform stable, precise control and is responsive. The experimental results verify the performance of the control driver algorithm.