FPGA-based Real-Time Hardware-In-the-Loop validation of a 3-phase PWM rectifier controller

The proposed paper deals with Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) validation of a 3-phase PWM boost rectifier controller. This validation has been made using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) target. The development of the Real-Time Emulator (RTE) of the power system is firstly discussed. All voltage sources from the grid, filters, power switches and the load real-time models are implemented in hardware using a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA device. As for the controller, a PI-based strategy has been chosen to control the DC-link voltage and a Hysteresis-based one for the control of 3-phase line currents. This controller has been implemented in software using the embedded Cortex-M3 processor of SmartFusion FPGA from MicroSemi. Real-time HIL simulation results, as well as offline simulation results are presented and compared.