REAL-TIME simulators do exist and have been widely
used for the analysis of electromagnetic transients
(EMTs) and testing physical control/protection platforms
[1]–[4]. Existing real-time simulators are based on parallel
processing, where multiprocessors, either general-purpose
processors (GPPs) or digital signal processors (DSPs), or
computer clusters are utilized [5]–[11]. The existing real-time
simulators have limitations on the minimum time-step size, the
frequency bandwidth of the simulation results [12], and the
accuracy of the adopted models. Therefore, their application
are limited, particularly when power electronic-based apparatus
with high switching frequencies are of concern. These
limitations are the main motivation behind the development ofa new field-programmable gate-array (FPGA)-based real-time
simulator [13] which addresses such technical limits/challenges
of real-time simulators based on a new methodology for implementation
of the system equations in a FPGA environment.
The salient feature of the implementation methodology of [13]
is that it maintains the calculation time, within each simulation
time-step, nearly fixed irrespective of the size of the system.