Under the promotion of global intelligence, the application of MCU has covered many fields. For example, computers, smart homes, fingerprint recognition, remote controls, digital cameras, electric toys, electric cars, etc. in our daily life play a key role in smart life. In addition, MCU also plays an important role in many industrial fields, such as robotic arms, automation control, instrumentation, stepping motors, industrial motors, etc. in industrial applications. MCU is the core component in the field of industrial control, which can perform complex and high-speed calculations required in applications to provide high-precision control.
According to Prismark statistics, the global industrial control market size in 2019 was 231 billion US dollars, and it is expected that the global industrial control market size will reach 260 billion US dollars in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of about 3%. With the steady advancement of China's smart manufacturing, the scale of MCU continues to expand. As of 2020, the demand for MCU products in industrial control has reached 2.6 billion yuan. It is estimated that by 2026, the industrial control MCU market will reach about 3.5 billion yuan.
Microcontroller Applications
MCU for industrial application scenarios include general frequency converters, servo control systems, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), etc.
In industrial control applications, the general frequency conversion market is nearly 56 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7%.
The general-purpose frequency converter is mainly composed of the main circuit (including the drive circuit), control circuit, signal sampling circuit, signal processing and fault protection circuit, and power supply circuit. The role of the frequency converter in industrial control is to change the cycle of its moving magnetic field by changing the frequency and amplitude of the AC motor power supply, thereby smoothly controlling the motor speed. Among them, the inverter adjusts the voltage and frequency of the output power supply by turning on and off the internal IGBT, and provides the power supply voltage actually required by the motor, so as to achieve the purpose of energy saving and speed regulation. Industrial microcontroller is mainly used to control the IGBT and current sensor in the inverter. Since the inverter is full of high-power electronic components, the working environment is facing the test of electromagnetic interference, corrosive gas, vibration and shock, so the MCU is required to have high/low temperature resistance and high stability.
The Servo Control Market scale is nearly 23.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35%.
Servo motors utilize position feedback to control their movement and final position. A microcontroller uses a timer to generate a pulse width modulated (PWN) signal that modifies the configuration to control the rotating servo arm. The servo controller MCU has built-in IP that can improve the calculation speed and the accuracy of interrupt handling for specific motor control applications.
The PLC Market size is nearly 15.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21%.
Industrial production has relatively high requirements for stability. The PLC is composed of a single-chip microcomputer plus corresponding protection circuits and self-diagnosis functions, so it has high stability and safety and is suitable for most applications in the industrial field. General-purpose MCUs can be applied to programmable logic controllers for controlling production processes.
The use of MCU in industrial control applications can improve system performance very well. With the development of industrialization, the future will require more energy-efficient control applications. Together with the automotive and medical fields, they will jointly drive the growth of the MCU market.
Microcontrollers from leading brands such as STMicroelectronics, Microchip, NXP, Texas Instruments, etc., are available at Hard Find Electronics LTD.