Case Study
12
Solution for Drone Propeller Electrical
Speed Controller
In last few years the use of drones in the
consumer, commercial, and industrial
markets has increased exponentially,
with rapid advances in technology
making them faster, more agile, and
easier to control. With the number of
manufacturers growing in proportion to
this market demand, drone engineers
are tasked with designing ever-higher
performing drones as rapidly as possible.
The weight and size of the circuitry play
critical roles in drone performance. The
drone's propeller ESC, for example,
must be both light and compact.
A typical high-performance drone
propeller ESC requires 4 to 6 BLDC
motors, a power stage, gate driver,
and microcontroller. Therefore the
rst hurdle designers must overcome is
how to implement these blocks using a
minimum of components, which would
otherwise mean a larger, heavier, and
more expensive PCB.
The STSPIN32F0 is the innovative
solution to these design challenges. A
3-phase gate driver, 12-bit ADC, and
12V linear regulator are fully integrated
in the STSPIN32F0, signicantly
reducing component count and enabling
manufacturers to design much lighter
and more compact ESC circuits. And to
speed up the development process, the
STSPIN32F0 has a built-in Arm
®
Cortex
®
M0 microcontroller with motor control
algorithm library, FOC, and full set of GUI
tools provided by ST.
STSPIN32F0A Advanced BLDC controller with
embedded STM32 MCU
Three-phase gate driver for high performance
mouser.com/stm-stspin32fo-controllers/
By Cheng Peng, STMicroelectronics
• 600mA current capability to drive
a wide range of power MOSFETs
• Real-time programmable over-
current
• Integrated bootstrap diodes
• Integrated 32-bit STM32F0 MCU
with Arm
®
Cortex
®
-M0 core
• Operational ampliers and
comparators
• On the eld FW boot loading
capability (STSPIN32F0A)
• On-chip generated supplies for
MCU, driver and external circuitry
