Accurate FPGA-Based Velocity Measurement with an Incremental Encoder by a Fast Generalized Divisionless MT-Type Algorithm

• Main Authors: Aleš Hace, Milan Čurkovič
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-09-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: incremental encoders; velocity measurement; MT method; FPGA; motion control
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/10/3250

Velocity measurement by an incremental encoder is an important issue for advanced motion control applications such as robotics. In this paper, we deal with a kind of MT-type velocity estimation method. Though the conventional MT method is well known and has been well proven in practice, it requires execution of an arithmetic division operation that prevents an efficient implementation on low-cost FPGA-based control platforms. Thus, we propose a divisionless MT-type algorithm, which can provide a similar performance in velocity estimation accuracy as the conventional method, but requiring significantly less FPGA resources, since it implements only simple arithmetic operations such as addition, subtraction, and multiplication, that can be implemented more easily on the processing hardware. Furthermore, the algorithm is fast in execution, thus, it provides the output in only a few clock cycles. Though the proposed algorithm can be described in a recursive form, the stability of the estimation process is not jeopardized, although it is an important issue in this case. Hence, the algorithm is introduced in a form which assures stability in a wide speed range. We show the implementation of the algorithm on the experimental FPGA platform. The experimental results validated the proposed divisionless MT-type algorithm fully for accurate velocity estimation.