PnP PEBB Control  Home  People Overview  Introduction  ONR PEBB Overview Research  Univ. Controller  Phase Legs  Software  Micro-Kernel  OO Micro-Kernel  Meeting Notes  CVS Archive Publications  PEBB Publications  Bibliography Related Links  ONR PEBB Program  ONR AEPS  CPES			Welcome to the home page of Virginia Tech's PnP PEBB Control research group (Plug-and-Play Power Electronics Building Blocks). What problems do we work on? The traditional approach to developing power electronics control systems has been heavily driven by the hardware itself. Unfortunately, such designs often exhibit: Lack of modularity Low flexibility Lack of standardization Higher complexity Longer design cycles Higher costs What solution approach do we use? The PEBB approach concentrates on modularizing and standardizing the power stage hardware and interfaces, while simultaneously modularizing and standardizing the digital control processing elements. We have also applied the same philosophy to the software running on embedded control processors. Our major projects are subdivided into the following topics: A Universal Controller designed to work for all embedded power applications. Phase Legs that provide plug-and-play modularity and interoperability. A Software Architecture based on dataflow design that brings the same modularity and standardization to embedded control software. A Real-Time Micro-Kernel designed to support our dataflow applications running on the universal controller. We are also working on an object-oriented version of the same micro-kernel. Latest News A design review for the univeral controller board (the application manager hardware) was conducted on September 27, 2001. The presentation materials and attendance list (PDF, 22 pp., 592K) from this review are available.