Extensible digital-signal-processing modules for real-time control and simulation

This paper describes the design of autonomous hardware digital-signal-processing modules which can be connected together to share the computational burden for real-time control and simulation applications. As many modules as needed can be added in the extensible architecture. Each module has 2 basically autonomous processing units (PUs), each of which has its own processor, clock, local RAM, EPROM, control and interface circuits. The PUs communicate with one another through global memories, I/O ports, and interrupts. A prototype of 3 modules has been built. For a computationally demanding test, the modules have been programmed to simulate a simple network of 2 turbo-generators (including excitation system, power system stabilizer and governor control) swinging with respect to a load and an infinite bus and with respect to each other. The results demonstrate that the proposed modules will be useful building blocks of real-time digital controllers and digital simulators