FPGA-based real-time simulation of state-space models using floating-point cores

The numerical simulation of power and electromechanical systems necessitates sub-microsecond calculation timesteps if the considered system is characterized by low time constants. Migrating the computational load to an FPGA have shown to suit well the real-time simulation needs of such systems. However, many challenges remain to concretize the broad adoption of FPGA technology for the real-time simulation context. In this paper, we present a general framework for the effective practice of FPGA modeling when the state-space approach is used. The computations are performed with the help of floating-point cores and the framework guaranties time-steps below 1 us. An FPGA-based implementation of a BLDC motor is presented as an illustrative example.