Measurement of voltage flicker and implementation using FPGA

This paper proposes a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based integrated circuit (IC) for measuring voltage flicker using the instantaneous voltage vectors. The proposed design scheme is developed using the very high speed integrated-circuit hardware description language (VHDL). The instantaneous voltage vector module, management module, and quantification modules are developed to construct the entire system. Some novel IP (intellectual property) cores, such as CORDIC and FFT, are used. Then the chip for voltage flicker calculation is designed based on these IP cores and is realized using a signal FPGA (XC3S1500). Some given simulation waveforms and field-measured waveforms with voltage flicker disturbances are adopted to demonstrate that the designed IC can obtain flicker components precisely.