Development of an electronic control unit for PMSM drives in automotive applications

This paper presents the development and design of an Electronic Control Unit for permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives for automotive applications, specifically for electrical traction drives of hybrid/electric vehicles. Hardware design of the electric motor control unit (EMCU) complies with the automotive hardware design standards. The software architecture of the EMCU is an AUTOSAR compliant real-time operating system (RTOS) based structure which enables easy integration of different function components and ensures safe hard real-time operation. Together with the RTOS on the 32-bit main microcontroller, an 8-bit support microcontroller is used to implement the functional safety requirements derived from analysis according to the ISO26262 automotive standard. The modular software structure also decouples the algorithm and interface development stages, making both hardware and software development processes less error-prone. To test the EMCU, a generic vector control scheme is implemented on the PMSM. Experimental results presented in the paper are acquired from tests on a full-sized ETAS HiL simulator setup consisting of a real-time PC and a configurable FPGA-based PMSM emulator board.