New Industry Products

160V Arm High-Performance Intelligent BLDC Motor Controller and Driver

August 29, 2018 by Paul Shepard

Active-Semi International Inc. has added a new member of its PAC55XX family of PAC® high-performance motor controllers with the PAC5532 IC. It is supported by an Evaluation Kit (EVK) and accompanying firmware for easy and fast evaluation of advanced motor control solutions.

The new PAC5532 contains the highest-performance MCU found in an integrated motor control and driver product on the market. It contains a 150MHz Arm® Cortex®-M4F MCU with 128kB FLASH, 32kB SRAM and an integrated Floating Point Unit (FPU) with Digital Signal Processor (DSP) instructions for highly-efficient implementation of motor control and drive applications.

The MCU also contains 4-level code protection, a cache for high-speed FLASH access, ECC for SRAM data and a CRC engine.

The PAC5532 also integrates highly-optimized peripherals specifically designed for 40V to 120V BLDC motor control and drive applications, such as battery-powered garden and power tools, e-bikes, e-skateboards, and other medium voltage applications.

The 160V PAC5532 is optimized for battery-powered BLDC applications from 40V to 120V. Integrated with the high-performance MCU is the power management, gate drivers and signal-conditioning for 3-phase inverter applications. The PAC5532 contains a 160V dc-dc buck controller and a 5V, 200mA dc-dc converter. The PAC5532 implements a Total Hibernate Mode™ which manages battery life and system efficiency by reducing quiescent current to just 19µA.

Functional block diagram (click on diagram to enlarge)

The Application-Specific Power Drivers™ (ASPD) integrate 180V/2A gate drivers for high power applications with 2-level dead-time protection for the external MOSFET-based inverter. The Configurable Analog Front-End™ (CAFE) contains 3 Differential Programmable Gain Amplifiers (PGAs), 4 single-ended PGAs, 10 comparators, buffers and DACs that can be used for signal sampling and filtering for the control applications, minimizing the need for external components.

Summary of features:

  • Fully programmable Arm® Cortex®-M4F 32-bit MCU
  • Programmable Over-Current Protection for Motor Drive Stage
  • 128kB FLASH, 32kB SRAM, 2.5MSPS SAR ADC
  • Integrated 160V DC-DC Buck Controller
  • 3 Integrated 180V/2A High-Side Gate Drivers
  • 3 Integrated 2A Low-Side Gate Drivers
  • Integrated PGA (3 Differential, 4 Single-ended)
  • Integrated DACs and Comparators
  • UART, SPI, I2C and CAN 2.0B serial interfaces
  • QEP Decoders
  • Minimal External Components
  • Extremely low IQ total hibernate mode
  • 8x8mm, 51-pin QFN

"The PAC5532 is our 2nd product release for our new family of highly integrated BLDC motor control solutions with increased FLASH memory and an Arm®Cortex®-M4F. It specifically targets the rapidly growing battery powered power and garden tool market, but finds use also in new e-mobility." says David Briggs, Vice-President and General Manager at Active-Semi.

"It is encouraging to see all the different applications we can service with compacter and more energy efficient solutions to give our customers a leading edge and faster time to market," added Briggs.

In a small 8mm x 8mm QFN package with all of the integration, the PAC5532 can realize an extremely small BOM and physical design size for compact high-power BLDC battery-powered applications.

The PAC5532EVK extends the PAC® family of evaluation kits (EVKs) enabling fast prototyping for various applications including garden tools, telecom fans, battery-powered vehicles, and general-purpose BLDC applications. Along with Active-Semi's motor control firmware and IP library, the PAC5532 will simplify system development with sensored and sensorless FOC and sensorless trapezoidal motor control applications for high-voltage battery powered applications.

PAC5532EVK1

Active-Semi's PAC5532EVK1 Evaluation Kit (EVK) is a complete hardware solution enabling users to evaluate and develop motor control applications around this powerful and versatile Arm® Cortex®-M4F based micro-controller. The module contains the PAC5532 Power Application Controller (MCU), MOSFET inverter and debugging headers for serial interfaces and GPIO signals that may be used for debugging and evaluation.

The PAC5532EVK1 can be used with Active-Semi's BLDC/BEMF or FOC firmware and Windows GUI for evaluation and debugging of the application. The ET-COLINK-1 may be used for connecting the EVK to a Windows PC using a USB cable, for programming and debugging using an IDE. The ET-UARTISO-1 may be used for connecting the Windows PC to the device's UART for the Windows GUI.

PAC5532 IC and PAC5532EVK1 are available from leading distributors.