February 25, 2014

Dusseldorf, February 25, 2014 — Renesas Electronics Europe, a premier provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced two motor control reference platforms designed to drive any 3-phase permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM), also called Brushless AC motors. They enable engineers to reduce or even eliminate the time they would normally take to calculate motor parameters and evaluate the best tuning algorithm coefficients. As a result, they can rotate a permanent magnet AC motor in less than one minute.

The two new inverter kits revolutionise the integration of 3-phase motors in equipment. Both are based on Renesas’ 32-bit RX family of MCUs, with one kit on RX220 offering 50DMIPS and the other on RX62T offering 165DMIPS. The RX220 inverter kit is designed for equipment requiring medium dynamics and a low-cost bill of material. The RX62T microcontroller integrates six operational amplifiers, six comparators, a floating point unit and two timer units to drive two 3-phase motors simultaneously. This kit provides the dynamics required to drive motors with a high level of accuracy.

Renesas has developed the two design tools based on RX62T and RX220 MCUs to respond to a challenge encountered by engineers: tuning the embedded software to the application requirements, especially for sensorless field oriented control algorithms. The inverter kits provide:

  • Auto-tuning of the current proportional-integral (PI) coefficients: Kp, Ki
  • Identification of intrinsic motor parameters: Rs, Ls, Λm
  • Real-time visualisation of the motor phase, current and step response

Both kits include an intuitive PC graphical user interface (GUI), providing engineers with a ready to use inverter reference prototype that enables them to drive their own motors in a few clicks. They also feature a sensorless vector control algorithm, which is used to accurately control the speed and the torque. This algorithm uses flux weakening in order to achieve rotation speeds higher than the nominal speed of the motor.

Each kit contains the YROTATE-IT inverter board, a 24VDC permanent magnet AC motor, a CD-ROM including the embedded software source code, the PC GUI, the board schematics, the bill of materials, Gerber files, user manual, quick start guide and the power stage schematics/Gerber files.

A video demonstration of the kits is available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrMXBWFfbY0

Refer to the separate sheet for the main specifications of the inverter kits.

Availability

The kits are in stock and available from customers’ local Renesas representatives. The part-names are the following: for the RX220 inverter kit: YROTATE-IT-RX220 and for the RX62T inverter kit: YROTATE-IT-RX62T. More technical details are available at the dedicated Motor Control Reference Platform webpage.

About Renesas Electronics Europe

Renesas delivers trusted embedded design innovation with complete semiconductor solutions that enable billions of connected, intelligent devices to enhance the way people work and live – securely and safely. As the number one global supplier of microcontrollers, and a leader in A&P and SoC products, Renesas provides the expertise, quality, and comprehensive solutions for a broad range of Automotive, Industrial, Home Electronics (HE), Office Automation (OA) and Information Communication Technology (ICT) applications to help shape a limitless future.

Renesas Electronics Corporation was established in 2010 and is headquartered in Japan.With over 800 hardware and software alliance partners worldwide, it has the industry’s largest local support network. Renesas Electronics’ European structure is comprised of three business units – the Automotive, the Broad-based and the Industrial Solution Business Unit.

Further information about Renesas Electronics Europe is available at www.renesas.com

Renesas Electronics Europe is also on social media at http://twitter.com/Renesas_Europe, http://facebook.com/RenesasEurope and http://youtube.com/RenesasPresents.


The content in the press release, including, but not limited to, product prices and specifications, is based on the information as of the date indicated on the document, but may be subject to change without prior notice.

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