FPGA Embedded System for Non-Invasive Current Measurement in Induction Motors

The measurement of electric current in induction motors is one of the most common methods for failure detection. Nowadays, current measurement and analysis systems have different issues: most of them have been implemented, fundamentally, with the use of computers and acquisition cards; hence, they have limited portability; in addition, most of them use invasive sensors. Therefore, this article presents the development of a data acquisition system embedded in FPGA. This system is standalone, portable and allows non-invasive AC measurements. The proposed system has the capabilities of displaying the effective current (rms) on an LCD screen, and storing and sending data to a PC. The system was tested on induction motors at different load conditions and induced failures. The system was compared against a National Instruments DAQ card and a commercial clamp meter, obtaining a relative average error of 0.88%. Future work may include the addition of different signal processing techniques in the developed system. In order to facilitate the reproduction of this system, the hardware description can be downloaded through the link present at the conclusions.