MCU enables inverter control in on-off switching motors

This includes factory equipment where energy efficiency is a priority such as water discharge, supply pumps, or cooling fans for data sensor servers; and cordless, battery-powered household products where longer operating periods are demanded, such as electric power tools and vacuum cleaners.

The new RX13T Group offers higher efficiency and lower Bill-of-Materials (BoM) cost by incorporating functions optimised for single-motor inverter control, reducing the number of required peripheral components, and including low-pin-count packages in its lineup.

The RX13T MCUs are the first MCUs operating at 32MHz to incorporate a Floating Point Unit (FPU) (Note 1). The RX13T also provides functions with a proven track record on RX Family MCUs, such as inverter control timer (MTU3), 12-bit A/D converter, Programmable Gain Amplifier (PGA), and data flash memory, making it possible to implement brushless DC motor control on a single chip.

“The 32-bit RX Family has a rich lineup of MCUs dedicated for motor control application since its market introduction ten years ago,” said Sakae Ito, Vice President of the IoT Platform Business Division at Renesas.

“The RX13T demonstrates Renesas’ continuous pursuit to help our customers realise energy and cost efficiency in every type of motor control solutions across the globe. As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of RX, we are committed to deliver constant product innovation to serve our customers and partners who make great solutions based on the RX Family of MCUs.”

The RX13T Group is the first in the RX Family to be available in a compact 32-pin LQFP package and a 48-pin LFQFP package. Renesas also plans to offer even smaller 32-pin 5mm square and 48-pin 7mm square QFN package versions. High compatibility with existing products such as the RX23T and RX24T in aspects such as timers and pin configurations makes it easy for customers to reuse existing hardware and software design assets.

As part of the development environment, Renesas offers a RX13T CPU card that supports the 24V Motor Control Evaluation Kit (with motor). It includes emulator functionality, eliminating the need for an on-chip debugging emulator and allowing users to begin evaluation by simply connecting the CPU card to a PC with a USB cable.

Motor control sample code for sensor-less vector control is also available, and supports the Renesas Motor Workbench 2.0 motor control development support tool. With this toolbox, developers have everything they need to jump-start evaluation of motor control applications.

Key features of the RX13T Group

• RXv1 CPU core with operating frequency of 32MHz and performance of 98.56 CoreMark (Note 2)
• On-chip FPU eliminates need for overflow processing when performing fixed-point arithmetic operations and contributes to more readable software code
• Support for a wide range of power supply voltages from 2.7-5.5V. Offering 5V support provides a high level of noise tolerance
• Incorporates MTU3 timer module for inverter control. The timer counter clock operates on a high speed clock frequency equal to the CPU’s operating frequency, making it easy to generate complementary PWM output with dead time that is required for inverter control
• Channel-dedicated sample and hold function (for three channels) enables simultaneous sampling of three phase current values, eliminating the need for error correction and lightening the software load
• 128 kilobytes (KB) or 64KB of on-chip code flash memory and 12KB of on-chip SRAM, There is also 4KB of on-chip data flash memory, eliminating the need for external EEPROM.
• On-chip peripheral functions such as three-channel PGA, three-channel comparator, and high speed on-chip oscillator (HOCO, accuracy of ±1.0%) reduce the need for peripheral components
• Models are available with support for an operating temperature range of -40°C to 85°C or -40°C to 105°C. This meets the increasing need in both the industrial and consumer fields for products capable of operating in high temperature environments

Pricing and availability

The RX13T is available now. Pricing varies depending on package, memory capacity and number of pins. For example, the 32-pin QFP package with 64 KB of ROM is priced at $0.99 USD (excluding tax) per unit in 10,000-unit quantities (pricing and availability are subject to change without notice).