High-Speed Real-Time Digital Emulation for Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing of Power Electronics: A New Paradigm in the Field of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) for Power Electronics Systems

Abstract

This paper details the design and application of a new ultra-high speed real-time simulation for Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) testing and design of high-power power electronics systems. Our real-time hardware emulation for HiL system is based on a custom, heterogeneous, reconfigurable, multicore processor design that emulates power electronics, and includes a circuit compiler that translates graphic system models into processor executable machine code. We present digital processor architecture details, and describe the process of power electronic circuit compilation. This approach to real-time emulation yields real-time execution in the order of 1µs simulation time step (including input/output latency) for a broad class of power electronics converters. In addition, we present HiL simulation experimental results for three representative systems: namely, a variable speed induction motor drive, a utility grid connected photovoltaic converter system, and a hybrid electric vehicle motor drive.