FPGA Based Real-Time Emulation System for Power Electronics Converters

Abstract

This paper deals with an emulation system for Power Electronics Converters (PEC). The emulation of PECs is performed on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) capable of hard real-time operation. To obtain such a system, the converter operation is described using a differential equations-based model designed with the graph theory. Differential equation coefficients are changed according to the type of converter and pulse-width modulation (PWM) signals. The tie-set and incidence matrix approach for the converter modelling is performed to describe the converter operation in a general way. Such approach enables that any type of PECs can be described appropriately. The emulator was verified experimentally by synchronous operation with a real DC-AC converter built for this purposes.

Keywords

• power electronics
• modelling
• network theory
• emulation
• FPGA