Renesas' New xEV Motor Control and Inverter Solutions for LEVs and CAVs
Electric vehicles (EVs) have come a long way since their practical introduction to the consumer market in the 2010s. Since then, the introduction of Light Electrical Vehicles (LEVs), Commercial and Construction, and Agricultural Vehicles (CAVs) have sparked a wave of innovation within the automotive industry to produce more efficient vehicles to support increased demand. Both LEVs and CAVs contribute to the broader shift towards electric mobility and sustainable transportation solutions, each serving different niches within the transportation industry.
While the electrification of non-automotive and commercial vehicles is essential for achieving a sustainable future, they come with unique challenges. These include developing more powerful and efficient batteries and optimized powertrains, which can lead to higher costs, longer charging times, and greater complexity in their design. To help facilitate greater power efficiencies and performance, Renesas has introduced several turnkey solutions of low-voltage inverters and inductive sensing for LEV and CAV applications suitable for 12V, 24V and 48V systems.
Renesas’ RH850 family of 32-bit MCUs features increased performance, low power consumption and comes in single and multiple CPU cores. (Image credit: Renesas)
The IPS2550 inductive sensor can provide precise rotor position and produce the data as sine and cosine outputs. (Image credit: Renesas)
The latest solutions target EV powertrains, including battery management, onboard chargers/PLCs, DC/DC converters (up to 48V) and HV motor control systems. Renesas RH850 family of MCUs is part of this spectrum, offering single and multiple CPU cores with high performance balanced with very low power consumption and reduced leakage. The MCUs feature integrated peripheral function IPs and scalability, batch save/restore function, branch prediction and high-speed Flash access. They also support standard communication interfaces such as CSI and automotive-oriented communication interfaces such as Ethernet, FlexRay, CAN-FD, LIN and SENT.
The RH850 can also be used with the company’s IPS2550 Inductive Position Sensor, which can feed gathered data to the MCUs to drive BLDC motor control platforms via several communication interfaces. The MCUs can be used for any number of applications, including those for EV bodies and gateways, infotainment and instrument clusters, powertrains, motor control and safety systems.
As noted earlier, Renesas’ IPS2550 inductive positioning sensor is an AEC-Q100 Grade 0 automotive-qualified, inductive position sensor IC capable of providing the absolute rotor position as sine and cosine. The IC uses Eddy currents to detect the position of the rotor moving above a set of coils. Output interfaces can be configured as single-ended for increased system cost-effectiveness or differential to reject common mode disturbers. The IPS2550 can also be used for high-speed motor commutation up to 600krpm electrical for functional safety-critical applications. The IPS2550 feature set is extensive and includes:
• Interface: sin/cos single-ended or differential
• Automotive AECQ100 Grade-0 Designed & Qualified
• Temperature range: -40° to 160° C ambient
• Functional Safety: supports ASIL-C @ single IC
• Voltage Supply: 3.3V ±10% or 5.0V ±10%
• Rotational Speed: up to 600.000 (el) rpm
• Propagation delay: 5µs
• Overvoltage, reverse polarity, short-circuit protected
• Sin/Cos gain mismatch and offset compensation
• Programming over I²C port or sin/cos wires
• Diagnostics interrupt to external MCU
• AGC to compensate air-gap variations
• TSSOP-16 with exposed pad
Renesas states that a digital version of the IPS2550 will be released soon for engineers who prefer access to instant data during the development process. The company also provides a robust series of support tools for the sensor, including a PCB coil design system with simulation, optimization and verification functions. Renesas also provides a wealth of documentation and support, including a calibration guide, Gerber files, application notes and data sheets.
Renesas has also revamped their MOSFETs to handle greater loads with increased efficiency and can handle up to 48V (up to 100A) depending on the application. The RBA250N10 family of N-channel MOS Field Effect Transistors are designed for high current switching applications and feature super-low on-state resistance, low input capacitance, is AEC-Q101 qualified and PB free.
Renesas also produced the RAA270000KFT family of PMICs to enhance the RH850 microcontroller series further and contains a pair of integrated current mode DC-DC converters, four low dropout linear regulators (LDOs), and two linear trackers. The input voltage of the PMICs, the output of all regulators, and the internal analog voltage corresponding to temperature can be monitored through ADCs in an external microcontroller. Moreover, they also include a power-up/down sequence controller, allowing engineers to reduce external components for controlling the target microcontroller power-up/down sequence.
The xEV Inverter Kit is ideal for LEVs and CAVs as it can handle 100kW motors with increased efficiency. (Image credit: Renesas)
Furthering Renesas’ xEV solutions, the company has introduced an xEV inverter kit for electric drivetrains. The PR-INV06500780-FB converts DC to AC for EV power systems and is designed to maximize motor performance using a combination of microcontrollers, power management ICs, gate driver ICs, insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), and fast recovery diodes (FRDs). The inverter kit can handle 100kW class motors and has a 99% maximum inverter efficiency.
According to Renesas, the company plans to introduce additional xEV inverter solutions that can handle the upcoming 800V to 1200V powertrain architecture for new EVs. With the advancement of new LEVs and CAVs from auto manufacturers, Renesas has kept pace to deliver more power-efficient drivetrain technologies. LEVs are gaining traction in most cities and will play a pivotal role in urban mobility and eco-friendly transportation, while CAVs are embracing electric power to reduce carbon emissions and costs. It will be interesting to see how Renesas will continue to evolve to handle these latest trends.
