RTLinux based Simulator for Hardware-in-the Loop Simulations

Hardware in the loop (HIL) simulations are being increasingly employed for rapid control prototyping, calibration and validation of the electronic control units. The stringent timing requirements and high development time are the main challenges in HIL simulation. The strict timing requirements demand a hard real-time operating system which is reliable, robust and deterministic in nature. In this paper, we have presented RTLinux based HIL simulator to perform validation and testing of electronic control unit (ECU) using hardware in the loop simulations on RTLinux, a hard real time extension to standard Linux operating system. The developed prototyper reduces the development time of HIL setups by automatically implementing the code generated by Mathworks' Simulink/Stateflow based models on RTLinux. A graphical user interface is developed with the simulator to aid the designers in analysis, design and testing of embedded control units. To show the implementation and results of the proposed scheme, a HIL simulator is developed for automatic transmission control (ATC) of the car on RTLinux.