Fast Linear Model Predictive Control Via Custom Integrated Circuit Architecture

This paper addresses the implementation of linear model predictive control (MPC) at millisecond range, or faster, sampling rates. This is achieved by designing a custom integrated circuit architecture that is specifically targeted to the MPC problem. As opposed to the more usual approach using a generic serial architecture processor, the design here is implemented using a field-programmable gate array and employs parallelism, pipelining, and specialized numerical formats. The performance of this approach is profiled via the control of a 14th-order resonant structure with 12 sample prediction horizon at 200-mu s sampling rate. The results indicate that no more than 30 mu s are required to compute the control action. A feasibility study indicates that the design can also be implemented in 130 nm CMOS technology, with a core area of 2.5 mm(2). These results illustrate the feasibility of MPC for reasonably complex systems, using relatively cheap, small, and low-power computing hardware.