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AMS2007 27
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Keynote Speaker PROGRESS IN HIGH-SPEED REAL-TIME
SIMULATION Roy E. Crosbie Ph.D., Professor
Emeritus, ABSTRACT Real-time simulation, in which
the behaviour of a simulation of a system develops in precisely the same
time-scale as the corresponding behaviour of the system itself, has been used for many years for testing
hardware (hardware-in-the-loop or HIL), software and for training (e.g.
flight simulators, power-plant simulators). The two distinguishing features
of real-time simulation are synchronization with the actual behaviour via a
real-time clock and an interface system that allows the external systems to
operate just as if they were connected to the real system. One of the key
characteristics of a real-time simulation is the frame time which determines
the discrete time increments by which a simulation is advanced each time the
next state of the system is calculated. Many real-time simulations
require frame times of the order of milliseconds, and modern real-time
operating systems, which typically involve latencies of a few microseconds,
are quite capable of supporting such applications. Some applications,
however, such as in power electronics and automobile engines require frame
times of less than 10 μS. Small arrays of
digital signal processors on PCI cards offer an efficient way of meeting this
requirement and have been demonstrated to support simple applications at
frame times as low as 2 μS. Another promising
approach for even shorter frame times is to use FPGAs,
which promise sub-microsecond frame times. Many applications require that
the high-speed real-time (HSRT) simulation is embedded in a larger simulation
of an entire system with less stringent frame-time requirements, and
multi-rate real-time simulation is another current research interest. The presentation will review
these developments and ongoing research in this area. |