simulating a digital control loop

You can simulate digital loops in the analog simulator quite accurately. The main problem is how to do delay by one sample. In the simple cases, this can be simulated as 1-st order phase shifter; you may need better approximation as you get closer to Nyquist. Another way to simulate digital circuit is by switched capacitor sircuit (beware of convergence problems). I've done it both ways; it is possible to get reasonably accurate results if you know and understand the properties and limitations of both analog and digital methods.

Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

You can use ptolemy or matlab. Either can do the job you're trying pretty well.

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Muzaffer Kal

DSPIA INC.
ASIC/FPGA Design Services

http://www.dspia.com

For analysis with a linearized plant see chapter 7 of my book:

If you're trying to simulate the loop with all of it's nonlinearities then Vladimir's suggestion of a one-cycle delay sounds smart. I don't know if there's a reasonable way to add quantization, though. You may want to consider a sample-and-hold circuit to simulate the action of the DAC and of any internal integrators instead of the delay; in theory it'd be more accurate.

I wish that someone made an easy integration between some C-like scripting language and a circuit simulator (BTW: if it costs more than a new car it's not easy). Then you could implement your control algorithm in something resembling its native form, and still get a "real" circuit simulation.

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Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com

I'd be happy with a 1 millisecond risetime, and can run the loop iteration ballpark 50 KHz, so my integration constants will be small. Given that, I can probably ignore sampling issues or, as you suggest, just throw in something like RC delays to approximate the effects of sampling.

Simulating quantization would be interesting. I'll effectively (maybe even on purpose) be dithering the ADC and especially the DAC to more bits than they actually have.

Hmmm... if I put an analog lowpass between the ADC and the mosfet (it's there already to deglitch, and I can play with the tau) the PID loop sort of dithers the DAC all by itself. And that dithers the ADC. All for free.

John

John Larkin a écrit :

It can easily done with spice.

The software delay can be modeled as a TLINE provided it is constant in your system. For switchers you model the switch as an averaged one (continuous model). The sampling action is modeled by a 2 poles TF (look at Ridley's paper "Accurate and practical small signal model for current mode control", or I can try to dig in one of my previous HDs).

With good modeling you can have average transient and AC (loop gain,...) simulations which are real close to the actual circuit.

That won't give you quantization though, and I guess this can't be modeled as with sigma delta since you have a first order loop and probably an almost constant signal.

Maybe, but I never tried this, you can discretize the loop (only for transient analysis) with use of B "arbitrary sources" within which you use some integer part function. I don't know whether LTspice support B sources, but you should find something equivalent...

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Thanks,
Fred.

Might look at Visual ModelQ

It has been some years since I played with it but it does include blocks for, e.g., sample & hold functions, delays, and digital filters. IIRC, the free downloadable version is fully capable but won't allow saving more complex models.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

Quantization looks like infinite gain, though, so unless it is wrapped inside of a sampled-time section it'll really slow down -- or completely crash -- the simulation.

You can analyze fairly well for quantization by treating it as noise at the magnitude of the quantization, and the worst possible frequency. Just inject a signal at the quantization point, do a frequency sweep to figure out the sensitivity of the output to the quantization, and take the worst spot.

Quantization always seems to seek to do the most damage possible, so treating it as worst case isn't paranoid. In this case, it really is out to get you!

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Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com

It's been a while I've looked at this but IIRC it's only one bit quantizer that have infinite gain. Multibit quantizers, as I guess John will use since he has plentiful bits ADC/DAC, have unit gain. I once used an ARM with 12b ADC/DACs to build a low OSR SD converter with real high resolution at almost no cost (the ARM was mandated for other things). Of course it wasn't more linear than the DAC on large signals, but the app was OK with that...

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Thanks,
Fred.

At the point of the quantization step the input moves an infinitesimal amount, and the output moves a finite amount. That's an infinite gain. With a 12-bit device, it happens 4095 times, instead of once.

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Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com

Hello John,

LTspice has a sample/hold device. It's named "sample" and you can get it from [Special Functions]. It allows to sample and hold a signal with the edge of a clock signal. Additional B-sources can be used to do the math in the loop. Even quantization is possible with the help of int() functions in the B-sources.

Best regards, Helmut

It really plays havoc when computing a simple "derivative".

Jerry

--
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what
nobody has thought.    .. Albert Szent-Gyorgi
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Derivatives usually cause more trouble than they do good. My "PID" controller will almost certainly have D=0.

John

I quibble with that 'usually'. "Very often", perhaps, and the trouble that's caused is often bad enough to make you shudder every time you think about turning up the derivative gain.

A judicious amount of derivative, in the form of a lead-lag with closely spaced zero and pole, can often do a world of good -- when it's not snarling you up in 2nd-order effects, of course.

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Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com

One way to avoid overshoots is to pre-shape the demand input, like using an adaptive slew limit or some such. I've done that in steamship throttle controls where you don't want to stress the plant too much, and NMR temperature controllers where a modest overshoot can poach some enzyme that a hundred rabbits died to make.

John

Yes, it does.

-- "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." (Richard Feynman)

Ah, thanks.

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Thanks,
Fred.

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Many systems don't require a derivative gain. It depends on the number of poles in your plant and we have no idea what you are trying to do.

I am a big believer in derivative gains since I must tune under damped systems. The trick is a have very fine resolution feed back that is almost noise free or a good model. I would use 16 bit analog feedback devices to get the finer resolution. I was just at a site where I used the second derivative gain and it was necessary.

Sometime a low pass filter on the output helps too. If you are clever you can calculate the gains and take the low pass filter into consideration. This is better than trying to tweak each gain one a time along with the output filter.

Do you have excess CPU time?

Peter Nachtwey

This is my VME module, with 12 channels of 4-20 mA isolated outputs. Each channel has its own ARM with a 12-bit ADC and a 10-bit DAC. The ADC will measure the voltage drop across a shunt resistor, to get loop current, and also our terminal voltage. The DAC drives a series linear mosfet to regulate output. It will behave like a constant-voltage, current-limited power supply, in that the user can program current and voltage and it will operate in the appropriate mode, depending on the load.

It's a 100 MHz 32-bit cpu, and the fastest I can digitize the pair of inputs is 100 KHz, and I could run the loop at 50 or even 25 KHz, so there should be tons of cpu cycles available.

John

You may be surprised at how quickly you can use up 1000 CPU cycles.

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Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com