Power Converter Emulation on Reconfigurable Hardware Using Device-Level Behavioral Modeling

Abstract: Precise models of power electronic converters significantly improve the fidelity of hardwarein- the-loop (HIL) simulators, thereby accelerating and reducing costs of design cycles in industrial applications. This thesis proposes detailed device-level hardware models of the IGBT and the power diode, for emulating power electronic converters on the field programmable gate array (FPGA). The hardware emulation utilizes detailed nonlinear behavioral models of these devices, and features a paralleled and fully pipelined implementation using an accurate floating-point data representation. Test cases for simple device-level power electronic circuits and a half-bridge converter are emulated on FPGA. A modular multi-level converter circuit using the proposed models is also emulated. The captured oscilloscope results demonstrate high accuracy of the emulator in comparison to the off-line simulation of the original test systems.