Design and implementation of an integrated environment for real-time control of power electronic systems

In this article, an integrated lab environment for the electrical engineering education is presented which includes hardware and software for the modeling, simulation and control of multilevel inverters. A five‐level cascade inverter is designed and implemented which is an educational platform for the students to test different pulse width modulation (PWM) techniques and verify simulation results. The integrated environment is based on Matlab together with dSPACE. Sinusoidal PWM (SPWM) and Selected Harmonic Elimination PWM (SHEPWM) blocks are constructed in Matlab/Simulink and converted to C code using Matlab/Real‐Time Workshop. C codes are sent to dSPACE's DS1103 digital signal processor (DSP) via dSPACE/Real‐Time Interface software. Voltages with variable frequency and amplitude obtained from SPWM and SHEPWM techniques are applied to an induction motor. Simulation and experimental results are visualized on the designed graphical user interface (GUI). The GUI is developed using dSPACE's ControlDesk software. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 17: 119–130, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI 10.1002/cae20169