NI Ultiboard Design of a GPIC Mating Board

This design is of a mating board to the NI General Purpose Inverter Control (GPIC). NI R&D has made investments in advanced embedded power electronics control systems due to the rapid growth in the power inverter environment. The Single-Board RIO GPIC is a deployment-ready commercial embedded system for power electronic control. It combines an embedded processer, a reconfigurable FPGA and power electronics I/O. This embedded system can be used for a variety of embedded power conversion and power applications, such as wind power converters, grid-tied solar inverters, and control of power electronic components. The GPIC mating board was designed for power system designers as a testing, signal breakout, and connectivity platform. The National Instruments suite of circuit design tools, NI Multisim and NI Ultiboard, offer advanced capabilities to develop custom PCBs for NI hardware. For more information, view the tutorials and reference designs at the end of the document.

1. Introduction to the Inverter Stack
2. Features of the GPIC Mating Board
3. Conclusion
4. Tutorials and References

Introduction to the Inverter Stack

The NI Single-Board RIO GPIC FPGA-based embedded system is designed to meet the cost, I/O, and performance needs of power electronics control applications.  Example applications include bi-directional inverter or rectifiers such as back-to-back inverters for grid-tied motors or generators, wind turbine 3-leg inverters, solar inverters, commercial electric vehicle propulsion drivers, and railway power bus inverters or converters.  The GPIC is a tool that is cost-effective for all SMPS designs that are 50 KW or larger.  The Single-Board RIO 9606, the GPIC 9683, and the mating board form the inverter stack.  An inverter stack allows the three printed circuit boards (PCBs) to act as a single system with multiple functionalities.  The Single-Board RIO features a user programmable FPGA and a PowerPC processor.  The GPIC offers a complete set of I/O, using common electronics control applications.  The controller and the I/O board are connected together using a RIO Mezzanine Connector (RMC); this provides high speed, high bandwidth length between the I/O on the GPIC and the FPGA on the Single-Board RIO.   The GPIC mating board connects directly to six female Insulation Displacement Connectors (IDC) headers at the bottom of the GPIC and provides connectivity to the 6-pack inverter load, as well as break-out of the simultaneous AIs, scanned AIs, LVTTL DIOs, Sourcing DIs, Sinking and Relay DOs, and Half-Bridge DOs.  The mating board was developed to save you days of development for a custom inverter interface.

Features of the GPIC Mating Board

The GPIC mating board maps the GPIC I/O including cable interface connectors, signal conditioning, watchdog timer circuitry, gate signal feedback circuitry, gate drive circuitry, and power supply DC/DC converters to a variety of connectors.  This example board can be modified to create a custom user defined mating board.

The features of this example GPIC mating board including the following:

1. Screw terminal breakout connectors for each GPIC I/O connector
2. 26-pin IDC Semikron SKiiP 3 connector, allowing you directly connect to large inverter cables
3. Powered by external 15 VDC regulated supply; extra terminals available for jumpering power to the Single-Board RIO using 2-position mini-fit power plug pigtail wire assembly
4. Shunt resistor pads for all analog inputs
5. Preservation of ground plain and trace keep-out spacing distances for functionally isolated simultaneous analog inputs
6. Relay signals isolated to reduce high current and noise.
7. Digital I/Os matched to traces at certain impedances to account for high speed currents
8. Follows simultaneous analog input pseudo-differential grounding scheme recommendations
9. Thick 0.093” PCB for mechanical strength
10. 0.040” plated holes for SH2 mating connectors for proper IDC connector mechanical alignment
11. Keepout spacing on all sides suitable for extraction crowbar tool
12. Keepout area for HALO transformer; no components can be placed underneath

You can find more information on the features of the GPIC mating board and download the Ultiboard template of this design at NI Single-Board RIO GPIC – Mating PCB Board Template

Conclusion

The Single-Board RIO GPIC embedded system reduces engineering costs and risks by taking advantage of an off-the-shelf inverter controller board, which incorporates the latest FPGA and real-time technologies, including a full set of I/O for power electronics controls.  The addition of the GPIC mating board to this embedded system allows you to focus development on your power electronics control algorithm.  Having an existing predefined mating board ready to use for testing and breaking out signals, saves you time from developing a custom user defined mating board.  However, you also have the option of modifying the template mating board.  Multisim and Ultiboard offer a suitable environment for optimizing this type of design.  With these three interfaces implemented together you will have a deployment ready commercial embedded system for power electronics control.

Tutorials and References

There are various resources available on ni.com, which provide you the tools required to architect custom designs such as a mating board for the GPIC.  To learn more follow the links below.

NI Multisim: Powerful Circuit Design and Teaching Software Environment

NI Single-Board RIO General Purpose Inverter Controller (GPIC)

NI Single-Board RIO GPIC – Mating PCB Board Template

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