NI Single-Board RIO General Purpose Inverter Control (GPIC) Mating Board

This design is of a NI General Purpose Inverter Control (GPIC) mating board for the NI Single-Board RIO 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 and signal breakout board for the Single-Board RIO GPIC. The National Instruments suite of circuit design tools, NI Multisim and NI Ultiboard, are ideal tools to develop a mating board for NI hardware. For more information, view the tutorials and reference designs at the end of the document.

1. Introduction
2. Features of the NI Single-Board RIO GPIC
3. Features of the GPIC Mating Board
4. Conclusion
5. Tutorials and References

Introduction

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.  For example bi-directional inverter/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, GPIC 9683, and GPIC mating board form the inverter stack.  An inverter stack allows the three printed circuit boards (PCBs) to act as a single system.  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.  The mating board was developed to save you days of development.

Features of the NI Single-Board RIO GPIC

The Single-Board RIO 9606 embedded controller integrates a real-time processor, a user configurable FPGA and I/O on a single PCB, while the 9683 GPIC extends the I/O capability of the controller board, providing a physical interface between the FPGA and the outside world. 

The features of the GPIC include the following:

1. 9 General Purpose I/O Channels for system level control and monitoring tasks
2. 16 high-speed simultaneous analog input lines for voltage or current measurements
3. 14 high-speed digital output lines for IGBT or MOSFET switching
4. 28 conductor digital output lines for direct connections to 24 volt conductors
5. 24 general purpose input lines
6. 32 general purpose digital input and output lines for system functions

You can create your power converter circuit on Multisim with its extensive library of electrical components. You can simulate and test your circuit using built-in simulation and analysis tools; you can develop a variety of control algorithms using LabVIEW FPGA and Control Design and Simulation toolkits.  You can combine your control algorithm and power converter circuit to validate the performance of your control algorithm in the Multisim-LabVIEW FPGA co-simulation environment.  An automatic process deploys your FPGA code to your FPGA target, Single-Board RIO, removing some of the low level complexities associated with traditional FPGA programming.

Features of the GPIC Mating Board

The GPIC mating board maps the GPIC I/O to a variety of connectors including cable interface connectors, signal conditioning, watchdog timer circuitry, gate signal feedback circuitry, gate drive circuitry, and power supply DC/DC converters.  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

For more information on the features and to download the Ultiboard template of this design: 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, also 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.  Using Multisim and Ultiboard to create the mating board, ensures quality and assurance that industry standards are followed.  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

Download a 30 Day Free Evaluation of Multisim and Ultiboard

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