Complete FPGA based real-time motor drive simulator with bidirectional battery and ultracapacitor power supply

The paper describes step by step the process of constructing and testing real-time tool for analysis of a bidirectional Buck-Boost converter supplying a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine (PMSM), as a traction motor for light electric vehicles. This converter was developed to be used as a controlled energy transfer equipment between the main energy source of a battery and an auxiliary ultracapacitor. The focus of this paper is to create a real-time model in the loop (RTMiL) simulator based on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). By this, the gap between the simulated models and the behavior of the real machine and its converter is diminished. The machine and the control unit with Field Oriented Control will be modeled on two FPGAs while for the Buck-Boost Converter, the battery and the ultracapacitor (UC) models will use a third FPGA. The communication between these devices is performed via the digital and analog I/Os. Hardware tools from National Instruments are used and the FPGA's are programmed using LAB VIEW FPGA graphical programming environment.