Hardware-in-the-Loop Model Design Using the ESA Control Toolbox in MATLAB Simulink

The ESA Control Toolbox is a new MATLAB toolbox that offers a quick, efficient, and practical alternative for the implementation of digital controllers into Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for space applications. This paper demonstrates the versatility and viability of the toolbox by showcasing its effectiveness in developing Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) models on FPGAs. While the straightforward way for implementing such models is by coding them in a Hardware Description Language (HDL), those languages are not trivial and render a cumbersome and time-consuming process. MATLAB Simulink HDL Coder blocks offer a more efficient and intuitive approach, though several issues arise from the fact that there is no static equivalence between blocks and VHDL code. In order to address these issues, the presented toolbox provides blocks that are linked to static VHDL code, enabling the design and synthesis of any kind of HIL model in FPGAs. This paper demonstrates the application of the toolbox in a case study for modeling a Three-Level Active Neutral-Point-Clamped (3L-ANPC) converter. The proposed toolbox results are compared with a MATLAB Simscape model incorporating both open and closed-loop controllers, yielding identical results and thus confirming the reliability and functionality of the ESA Control Toolbox as an alternative for creating FPGA-based HIL designs.