Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulations: A Historical Overview of Engineering Challenges

Abstract

The design of modern industrial products is further improved through the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation. Realistic simulation is enabled by the closed loop between the hardware under test (HUT) and real-time simulation. Such a system involves a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and digital signal processor (DSP). An HIL model can bypass serious damage to the real object, reduce debugging cost, and, finally, reduce the comprehensive effort during the testing. This paper provides a historical overview of HIL simulations through different engineering challenges, i.e., within automotive, power electronics systems, and different industrial drives. Various platforms, such as National Instruments, dSPACE, Typhoon HIL, or MATLAB Simulink Real-Time toolboxes and Speedgoat hardware systems, offer a powerful tool for efficient and successful investigations in different fields. Therefore, HIL simulation practice must begin already during the university’s education process to prepare the students for professional engagements in the industry, which was also verified experimentally at the end of the paper.

DSP-based controller-in-the-loop speed control system for marine diesel generator sets

“…This approach helps identify design flaws and deficiencies by thoroughly examining the system's behavior. Hardware-in-theloop simulation testing technique is beneficial for conducting comprehensive system tests on shipboard control systems [11].The DSP28335 can achieve communication between networks by creating socket keywords. Socket programming is a network programming technique built on top of TCP/IP.…”

GRU-Based Denoising Autoencoder for Detection and Clustering of Unknown Single and Concurrent Faults during System Integration Testing of Automotive Software Systems

“…The goal of training and optimizing the designed model is to minimize the reconstruction error so that the essential features can be accurately captured and reconstructed. The mathematical equation for the MSE is presented in Equation (8), where X i is the samples of the original input data, X i is the samples of the reconstructed output and L is the total number of data points:…”

“…To overcome the limitations of pure non-real-time simulation testing and real test drives on public roads, HIL simulation platform has been introduced as a safe, flexible, and reliable validation method [ 8 ]. In addition, HIL can benefit from the two aforementioned methods by conducting simulated test drives considering critical scenarios and real-time constraints [ 9 ].…”

Efficient Hardware-in-the-Loop Models Using Automatic Code Generation with MATLAB/Simulink

“…Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) techniques contribute greatly to the testing stages of complex systems because they minimize the risk of injuries or equipment breakdown [1,2]. In these techniques, an element of the real system is replaced by a real-time model.…”

“…The use of HIL elements is one step in the V-shaped development cycle of complex systems, as shown in [1]. A power engineer typically builds the model in a high-level language.…”