Practical considerations for HIL simulations of power converters using different numerical methods

Abstract

The use of Hardware-In-the-Loop systems implemented in FPGAs is constantly growing due to their performance. However, hardware implementation of numerical methods to solve differential equations presents some challenges when applied to power converters. This paper shows a comparison of several numerical methods: Euler, Heun, Midpoint and 4th order Runge-Kutta, taking into account the accuracy of the methods and how they can be applied to power converters, where the equations change depending on the status of the switches. Results show that the speed in the solution of the numerical method is the main variable that affects the accuracy of the simulation, so in order to keep a fast resolution speed numerical method with low resources should be used.