With the rapid development of industrial automation, vehicle electrification, and smart home technologies, efficient motor control technology has become an indispensable part of modern engineering. As the core device for energy conversion and power drive, the efficiency, reliability, and intelligence of motors directly affect the overall system's performance. Therefore, designing a comprehensive hardware and software solution for efficient motor control can not only reduce energy consumption but also achieve precise control to meet diverse application needs. This article will introduce the development trends in motor control technology, as well as NXP and Arrow's advantages and solutions in this field.
Trends and challenges in motor control development
Motor drives are often required in industrial and IoT applications, where the demand for energy efficiency drives the growth of electrical energy ratings and heat pumps, leading to an increased need for low-power systems. This necessitates ultra-low voltage drives and battery-based systems to meet the trend of sustainability development. Additionally, the demand for efficient drive motors has also increased, requiring various emerging motor types and efficient control algorithms. In terms of synchronous control, the growing demand for industrial networking and multi-axis motion control will drive the pursuit of drive efficiency.
On the other hand, with the increasing demand for safety and security, systems are placing greater emphasis on functional safety and cyber security, striving for robustness, predictive maintenance, and compliance with industrial standards to enhance system reliability.
However, motor control also faces numerous market challenges, such as market fragmentation, a wide variety of use cases, and the home appliance market's increasing demand for reduced BOM or design costs. Furthermore, there are challenges related to industrial functional safety requirements, varying levels of expertise among motor control customers, the emergence of numerous distinct motor control tools and software, as well as system-level solutions at the power stage, all of which pose challenges for motor control applications.
There are many types of motor control, including brushed DC, stepper, brushless DC (BLDC), permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM), and alternating current induction motors (ACIM), covering various vertical markets. Major trends driving growth in these markets include the pursuit of energy efficiency, the need for heat pumps and ultra-low voltage motor drives, and the trend towards automation, which boosts demand for servo drives, mobile robots, and power tools. Additionally, there are key growth markets driving technological differentiation, including similar motor control technologies that span multiple vertical markets, evolving towards low-speed high-torque and variable load applications. Currently, the main trends in growth markets indicate that the focus of motor types is shifting towards BLDC and PMSM.
Comprehensive hardware plus software integrated motor control solutions
NXP's motor control products adopt a "one-two punch" approach that integrates hardware and software. The product lineup ranges from the entry-level and mainstream MCX portfolio, supporting speeds as low as 48 MHz, to the i.MX RT crossover MCUs reaching up to 1 GHz. Additionally, the i.MX applications processors, designed for motor control combined with motion control, features Cortex-A + Cortex-M cores. Its motor control subsystem includes hardware-synchronized high-speed ADC, motor control PWM, operational amplifiers/programmable gain amplifiers (PGA), and encoder interfaces. This subsystem enables scalable processing to streamlined the motor control development experience.
Compared to competitors, NXP holds a differentiated advantage. For example, the i.MX RT crossover MCUs operate at a frequency of up to 1 GHz, enabling high-dynamic motor control. The i.MX 94 MPU features a real-time core for motion-integrated motor control, capable of ultra-efficient processing. Furthermore, NXP offers an unified motor control subsystem with proprietary NXP IP specifically designed for motor control, which can be scalable across its MCU and MPU product portfolios.
NXP's motor control solutions optimize application costs with built-in on-chip PGA and position decoders. The i.MX RT crossover MCUs also provide the highest DMIPs per dollar and offers use-case orientated integration capabilities, such as gigabit industrial networking for connected factory servo drive and eIQ® AI/ML features for motor predictive maintenance and anomaly detection. Additionally, these solutions enable rapid prototyping through motor identification and tuning, supported by easy-to-start SDK examples, helping accelerate time-to-market.
NXP delivers layered solution products. In proof-of-concept, it assists customers in demonstrating a concept or idea, verifying limited hardware availability, basic testing, and firmware. Customers receive firmware/schematics example to start their projects and enhance confidence in device compatibility.
For reference designs, NXP provides optimized reference solutions tailored to specific customer use cases, including hardware available through all channels, regulatory certifications, and training and support for software tested and maintained. Customers gain hardware/schematics example for development projects, boosting implementation and test confidence, alongside full software/firmware examples to accelerate time-to-market.
NXP's FRDM development platform offers low-cost expandable boards, which are scalable solutions that are easy to build and accessible through various channels and partners. It provides training, support, and reference software, allowing customers to scale easily for different use cases. The products enable rapid time-to-market, feature extensive market support, and offer multiple examples.
High-performance processors and development tools for motor control applications
NXP's i.MX RT1180 is a high-end crossover MCU featuring a high-performance Arm® Cortex®-M7 core with a clock speed of up to 800 MHz and an energy-efficient Cortex®-M33 core with a frequency of up to 240 MHz. The i.MX RT1180 features industrial gateway functionality, supports industrial real-time protocols (Profinet, EtherCAT, EtherNet/IP, etc.), and implements the latest gigabit Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) protocol through an advanced Ethernet switch subsystem and 1.5 MB on-chip RAM with ECC protection. The i.MX RT1180 also integrates advanced power management modules, including DC DC and LDO regulators, reducing the complexity of external power supplies and simplifying power sequencing. It also has a large subsystem that can support multiple applications, including storage interfaces and connectivity interfaces (CAN-FD, LPUART, LPSPI, LPI2C, FlexIO, etc.).
NXP's i.MX RT1180 is a crossover dual-core real-time microcontroller (MCU) with a TSN switch and EdgeLock® security, using Arm® Cortex®-M7 and Arm® Cortex®-M33 cores for high performance and real-time control capabilities. The i.MX RT1180 integrates TSN switches and EtherCAT SubDevice controllers, making it ideal for industrial and automotive communication applications.
The i.MX RT1180 CM7 operates at a frequency of up to 800 MHz, and the CM33 operates at a frequency of up to 240 MHz, with 1.5 MB of on-chip RAM. This family supports multiple protocols, enabling communication bridging between real-time Ethernet and Industry 4.0 systems. The i.MX RT1180 also provides advanced information security, integrating NXP’s EdgeLock® Secure Enclave. The i.MX RT1180 family is supported by the MCUXpresso developer experience, which includes SDK, IDE options, secure programming and provisioning, and configuration tools for rapid development.
NXP can assist motor control developers in a series of processes, starting with system setup, followed by motor modeling, which can be adjusted through the FreeMASTER motor control application tuning (MCAT). The third step involves motor tuning, which can be debugged at runtime using FreeMASTER with MCAT. Subsequently, software delivery can be performed using the motor control code examples in the MCUXpresso SDK, leading to the launch of the final product.
FreeMASTER is a real-time debug monitoring, and data visualization tool for application development and information management. It includes oscilloscopes, real-time storage, and dashboard control capabilities, offering ease of use while being highly scalable. It supports basic control and visualization without code changes, middleware for more powerful implementations, full support for custom dashboards and scripts in HTML/JavaScript, data exchange with other applications, and various interface options, including UART, CAN, BDM/PD-BDM, and SWD or custom interfaces. It can run on any platform with an available serial interface. FreeMASTER Lite supports remote control dashboards on non-Windows platforms.
MCAT is a plugin tool for FreeMASTER that works with FreeMASTER to enable real-time monitoring, tuning, and updating of control parameters in motor control applications. MCAT can tuning control parameters for the target motor/application, dynamically tuning and update control parameters, and generate header files with tuned static parameter configurations. It is independent of the MCU and arithmetic (16-bit/32-bit, Fix/Flt).
Intelligent TSN/EtherCAT motor control development toolkit
To accelerate customers' product development speed, the SEED-RT118X development kit, developed by Arrow Electronics, is a development toolkit for intelligent TSN/EtherCAT motor control. The integrated i.MX RT1180 crossover MCU comes with an advanced EdgeLock secure enclave and is based on an 800 MHz Cortex-M7 and 240 MHz Cortex-M33 dual-core architecture to achieve design flexibility. This series includes a TSN switch, supporting real-time rich network integration and handling time-sensitive and industrial real-time communication. The i.MX RT1180 supports multiple protocols, bridging communication between real-time Ethernet and Industry 4.0 systems. The SEED-RT118X integrates Ethernet, EtherCAT, CAN, USB, SD functionalities, and four connectors that can independently support additional motor control boards.
The SEED-RT118X Ethernet board has a total of 5 Ethernet ports, where ETH0 and ETH4 are 100 Mbps ports, and the other three are gigabit ports. ETH0 - ETH3, these four ports, connect to a 4-port TSN switch inside the RT 118X. ETH4 connects to a TSN GMAC inside the RT 118X. The Ethernet ports ETH0 and ETH4 of the SEED-RT118X EtherCAT board can be configured as EtherCAT interfaces ECAT0 and ECAT1. By modifying the board's resistors, the PHY interface can be selected as RMII or MII. EtherCAT features high communication speed, good synchronization performance, flexible topology structure, high real-time performance, high reliability, and stability.
The SEED-RT118X motor control interface board also reserves four motor control interfaces with the same pin definitions. When paired with specific driver boards, this application solution based on the NXP i.MX RT1189 can be used for 24V-48V DC servo motor, BLDC, and stepper motor control.
The SEED-RT118X TSN can perform GPTP clock synchronization, test RT118X GPTP clock synchronization parameters, and handle SEED-RT118X TSN data transmission and reception. It can send timestamped data to test the RT118X network stack's processing delay and forwarding delay. The SEED-RT118X TSN switch can configure the VLAN, forwarding table, and traffic scheduling functions of the RT118X TSN switch. Through testing, the maximum error of SEED-RT118X GPTP clock synchronization parameters is ±39.98 ns, the average error is 2.556 ns, and the total processing delay and forwarding delay of the SEED-RT118X network stack are about 36 µs.
Conclusion
Efficient motor control is not only a direction for technological innovation but also a key factor in driving energy conservation, emission reduction, and intelligent applications. Through the collaborative design of hardware and software, engineers can achieve more efficient and reliable motor operation, meeting the growing performance demands across various industries. At the same time, with continuous advancements in control algorithms, processor performance, and development tools, the barrier to designing efficient motor control systems is gradually lowering, bringing innovative opportunities to more application scenarios. NXP and Arrow’s motor control solutions introduced in this article will play an irreplaceable role in global technological competition and sustainable development, helping to create a better technological life.