Ferrari’s Formula 1 team – how MLE helped them to go faster

The task

Ferrari involved MLE in development work on a new top secret project, which looked at measuring rotating angles at high speed using the difference between two resolver positions. Ferrari had such specific requirements, that when they looked for an off-the-shelf solution, they couldn’t find one, so they commissioned one instead, which is where MLE came in. MLE were tasked with developing a dual channel, high-precision and high-speed resolver interface, which was able to drive two resolvers with accuracies of 0.25 degrees at 20,000RPM. On top of this MLE had to turn the project around as quickly as possible to allow Ferrari to carry out performance testing on their cars before the next race season.

Why this product is so special

The interface had to be highly accurate and able to resolve the difference between two angular positions. On top of this it has a PC interface, high precision analogue outputs and it uses a state of the art high-speed DSP processor.

How it works

The interface’s chip provides accurate reference sinewaves and by using advanced trigonometric functional analysis in the DSP to extract phases and therefore absolute and relative positions between the two signals.

To make this project possible MLE called upon their skill of embedded intelligence, high-precision analogue and system integration.

Impressive results

The engineering team at MLE loved using one of their favourite solutions in this project: a DSP to capture and calculate the required signals. An added exciting challenge for them was the integrating of high-speed digital processing in a low noise analogue environment. Added to this was that despite the tight timescales, MLE were able to develop a solution that was right first time, as with R&D this isn’t always the case, the clients’ specification changes or new requirements come to light.

Marrying up technologies is an area where MLE are really gifted, they are able to take technologies that usually don’t like one another and create a happy harmony between the two. Where others may look into solutions that work around this challenge, MLE don’t accept and seek to understand and mediate to bring create the perfect solution.

The challenges that were faced and overcome

A key challenge of this project was obtaining specialist components; we needed to obtain the right chip that would provide the right accuracy. MLE’s purchasing team rose to the challenge and sourced high precision driver interface component and the right Texas Instruments DSP with peripherals to make a commercial solution.

Another impressive element of this project was the complex arithmetic that was required; we needed to produce arithmetic that would calculate trigonometric functions. Luckily the MLE team boasts a number of outstanding mathematicians, who also happen to be pretty fine engineers too and for this project this proved to be invaluable.

Why MLE loved this project

To work with Ferrari was a dream for MLE; the team regularly found themselves getting involved with test results from the circuit and could see how the product they had developed was helping Ferrari to go quicker.

The end result

Ferrari received exactly what they were looking for within a very short time frame. They also went on to win the Formula 1 title that year.