Design of a Low-latency Power Electronics-based Power-HIL System for an EV Motor Controller

This paper presents a platform for conducting Power-hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) testing of an electric vehicle (EV) motor controller implementing field oriented control (FOC). A fast-switching power-electronics-based amplifier is used to achieve the required transient response speeds necessary for emulating a three phase AC motor with a high fundamental frequency. A field programmable gate array (FPGA) is used to implement the bidirectional high-speed fibre-optic interface, communicating signals between the physical system and a real time digital simulator (RTDS) platform. This allows for a 1 microsecond simulation timestep and a total delay less than 4 microseconds. Using RTDS allows for the simulation to be developed through a traditional circuit simulator interface, rather than requiring a specialized simulation developed to run on an FPGA. Separately from the power amplifier, a resolver emulator system has been developed, allowing for all sensing systems of an EV motor controller to be validated before connecting a physical motor.