The fast and accurate interfacing of digital control platforms with power hardware constitutes a bottleneck in power electronic systems. The guidelines for the effective implementation of this interface are proprietary and not readily available to the designer. This paper presents a systematic approach for developing a mixed-domain control platform for high-frequency power converter applications. The proposed design methodology comprises three crucial steps. In the first step, the platform requirements are identified considering a wide range of switching frequency variations (up to tens of megahertz) found in power electronic applications. In the second step, a system architecture is derived, and its key building blocks and associated features are established based on the application requirements. These building blocks include serial ADCs and DACs, parallel ADCs and DACs for high-speed operation, protection circuits, PWM channels for converter gating, and digital communication features. In the third step, hardware components are selected for realizing different blocks based on a detailed comparison of the salient features of commercially available parts. A prototype of the proposed control platform is fabricated, and the experimental results are presented for validation. The results reinforce the criteria laid down in the design methodology. Further, the proposed control platform is compared with commercially available rapid control prototyping products and is shown to be economically effective for the desired features in typical power converter applications.
