A Versatile Modular Hardware Platform for Distributed Large-Scale Real-Time Simulation

A new versatile and modular hardware platform for distributed real-time simulation is presented in this paper. The system is aimed at large-scale simulation on system level but with the ability to include simulation of switched power electronics for hardware-in-the-loop components connected to single nodes of the simulated system. High complexity is possible through parallelization on the system level to account for large numbers of simulated components. Low time-steps are possible through parallelization on chip-level to offer parallel computation aided by field-programmable gate array devices. Processor boards handle the simulation of subcomponents and are interconnected to build the large-scale systems. Hardware-in-the-loop connection is provided in a flexible yet powerful way by dedicated interface boards connected to a controlling processor board. A backplane with active routing capability is used to handle low-latency communication throughout the simulation platform. A small-scale system simulating an example buck converter with a time-step of 1 s is presented to show the functionality of the simulation platform.