Power Electronics Roadmap

[martinjaeger]

This issue is used to track the status of features related to power electronics in Zephyr.

See also related Mini-Conference recording from Zephyr Developer Summit 2021.

Advanced PWM / timers

Typical features

• Complementary PWM channels
• Automatic dead-time insertion
• Synchronization between multiple channels (typically at least 3)
• Multiple counter triggering options (e.g. for left/right edge-aligned and center-aligned PWM)
• Tight coupling with other peripherals
• Chopping with carrier frequency (for gate drive transformer driving)
• Fault handling inputs and safe output states
• Buffer-backed or DMA-driven waveform generation (e.g. for sinusoidal waveform generation)

Overview of MCU series

MCU Series	Motor Timer	High-resolution Timer
ST STM32	TIM1/TIM8 - Advanced Timer	HRTIM - High-Resolution Timer
Microchip SAM	TCC - Timer/Counter for Control Applications	-
NXP Kinetis	FlexTimer	eFlexPWM
TI C2000 *	ePWM	HRPWM
ESP32	MCPWM - Motor Control PWM	-

*) currently not supported by Zephyr

ToDos (mainly for STM32 HRTIM)

• Support of pinmuxing for HRTIM via Devicetree (dts: add HRTIM pinctrl hal_stm32#87)
• Support of HRTIM in existing PWM driver (single channel, but high resolution)
• Create new half_bridge / sync_pwm / complementary_pwm API (see also RIOT implementation).
• Implement new API for STM32 HRTIM

Real-Time Stream and Sensor API (RTIO)

Offloading of ADC and automated processing of ADC readings in the background.

Related PRs

• rtio: Real-Time Stream and Sensor API #17434

Hardware triggers

Hardware triggers to connect timers, ADC, DAC and comparators.

Related PRs

• Add api for hardware trigger #33918

Comparator API

Mainly relevant if it can be coupled with DAC and timers for fast overcurrent protection and DC/DC control loops.

[henrikbrixandersen]

I have implemented support for the NXP Kinetis Analog Comparator (ACMP) using the Zephyr sensors API: https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/blob/main/drivers/sensor/mcux_acmp/mcux_acmp.c

Perhaps we can generalize the sensor API extensions used for the ACMP and avoid a comparator specific API?

[hongshui3000]

Is this roadmap still a work in progress?I feel like I've been stuck for a lot of time.

[seyednasermoravej]

Hello everyone,

I’m working on implementing a converter that consists of a few cascaded devices. Each of these devices requires a high-resolution timer, and it’s essential that these timers are synchronized with each other. The system-on-chip (SoC) I’m using is the STM32G474RE, which includes a high-resolution timer. However, I couldn’t find any information about this timer in the .dtsi file. My question is whether it’s possible to utilize this timer and achieve synchronization among the timers with current progress? In CubeMX, the input synchronization pin is referred to as HRTIM1_SCIN, and the output synchronization is labeled as HRTIM1_SCOUT.