Run-time reconfigurable solutions for adaptive control applications

The requirement for short time-to-market has made FPGA devices very popular for the implementation of general purpose electronic devices. Modern FPGA architectures offer the advantage of partial reconfiguration, which allows an algorithm to be partially mapped into a small and fixed FPGA device that can be reconfigured at run time, as the mapped application changes its requirements. Such a feature can be beneficial for modern control applications, that may require the change of coefficients, models and control laws with respect to external conditions. This paper presents an embedded run-time reconfigurable architecture and the corresponding design methodologies that support flexibility, modularity and abstract system specification for high performance adaptive control applications. Through experimental results it is shown that this architecture is both technically advanced and cost effective so, it can be used in increasingly demanding application areas like automotive control.