Real-time emulator of an induction motor: FPGA-based implementation

This paper presents an educational tool based on a novel approach to develop an FPGA-based real-time emulator of an induction motor using the dynamic model. The method exploits the parallelism and high speed characteristics of the FPGA. Different fixed-point representation of the external and internal signal is used. The emulator architecture is presented as well as peripheral units implemented along with the main unit. The real-time emulator is evaluated by experimentation under start-up and varaible load torque conditions. This emulator is the based to implement algorithms like speed and flux estimators, i. e. Extended Kalman Filter, Luenberguer-like observer, etc., and several control schemes like Direct Torque Control, Field-Oriented Control, etc. for induction motors.