Practical Learning of DSP-Based Motor Control for Engineering Students

This paper discusses a practical approach to learning the basic principles of control engineering using DSP-based motor control. Laboratory work utilising microcontrollers for signal processing usually requires students the knowledge of coding for embedded software programming. However, a variety of visual programming software offered on the market provides assistance in avoiding low-level software programming for microcontrollers. This feature can be useful for students not specialising in electrical engineering, who have to understand the basic operation of MCUs and do not need to study them in detail. In order to focus the attention of those students only on the main MCU features, this paper presents an example of embedded software developed using visual programming in the Matlab/Simulink environment for studying DSP-based motor control. This approach can be implemented in the laboratory curriculum for non-electrical/electronic students to provide effective learning of the principles of motor control and basic control engineering. The educational laboratory setup consists of Texas Instrument hardware and a low-power 3-phase BLDC motor.