ARTEMiS

Real-Time Solvers for the Simulink SimPowerSystem* Toolbox 

ARTEMiS For High Precision, Real-Time Simulation of Electromechanical Systems

For users of The MathWorks' SimPowerSystems Toolbox who need to accelerate their power system models or simulate them in real-time, ARTEMiS provides enhanced algorithms that ensure reliable, accurate, and fast fixed step-length computations, essential for high fidelity, high-performance simulations. Unlike SimPowerSystems on its own, ARTEMiIS was designed from the ground up to support real-time implementations of power systems simulations, dramatically improving computation speed while preserving accuracy. It is the ONLY way of getting high precision, hard-real-time performance out of SimPowerSystems models.

Designed for Fast Simulation and Hardware-in-the-Loop

• Fixed-time-step integration algorithms designed for real-time applications
• Compatibility with the Real-Time Workshop(RTW) code generator
• Compatibility with RT-LAB for distributed real-time execution on PC clusters

Higher precision for linear circuits with high frequency components

• Improves the simulation precision
• Eliminates the phase-shift error

Better accuracy with nonlinear elements

• Improves the simulation accuracy of systems with nonlinear elements

No numerical oscillations

• Uses stable integration methods that are free from numerical oscillations

Easy to Install and Use

• Drag-and-drop from ARTEMiS Toolbox available in the Simulink library browser
• Online documentation.

Variable-step accuracy with fixed-step performance

It is a fundamental constraint of real-time simulation that the model must use fixed-step integration solvers. In stiff systems like power electrical circuits, the traditional approach is to use a variable step solver for resolving the high-frequency components in the behavior of the system. Because the time to solve at each timestep is non-deterministic, these solvers have to be replaced with fixed-step solvers, which introduce errors into the solution.

ARTEMiS introduces innovative fixed-step solvers and efficient computational techniques that dramatically improve the computational performance of SimPowerSystems, to allow you to develop real-time simulations with your power systems models.

Because these are deterministic fixed step algorithms, you can create robust, accurate real-time simulations of your power system at significantly higher performance than with SimPowerSystems without ARTEMiS. In fact, it has been shown that simulations can be as much as 15 times faster than those done using the standard fixed-time-step methods, without the inherent errors associated with these solvers.

More power for less cost

The new solvers introduced by the ARTEMiS are proven to be highly accurate and stable over much larger time steps than with the Trapezoidal fixed-time-step algorithms used by Simulink. Users can therefore get the same accuracy with less powerful and lower-cost systems, to give the performance needed for high-fidelity real-time simulation.

Optimized solvers for real-time simulation of power electrical circuits

Furthermore, ARTEMiS includes special power-circuit-specific algorithms for addressing typical problems encountered when converting your SimPowerSystems model to real-time. For example, for circuits with switches, ARTEMiS calculates all circuit topology matrices prior to running the simulation, and uses circuit decoupling methods to reduce the size and number of these matrices, so that the computation runs smoothly in real-time, even when a switch changes state. Similarly, strategies to avoid algebraic loops and non-deterministic iterative calculations are included. These allow fixed computation times per step and interruption-free simulation in real-time.

Create distributed real-time simulations on PC clusters with RT-LAB

ARTEMIS integrates fully into the Simulink environment in the form of a Simulink blockset, and is fully compatible with Real-Time Workshop (RTW) for real-time execution, or for simply accelerating the model.

ARTEMIS optimizes RT-LAB, allowing you to automatically convert your SimPowerSystems schematics into real-time simulations. This allows the distribution of a large, complex power systems model over several processors, in order to get the computational power required to achieve high-performance, real-time execution on low-cost, off-the-shelf PCs and non-proprietary hardware.

Using ARTEMiS

Without ARTEMiS	With ARTEMiS
Standard fixed-time-step solver showing numeric instability.	ARTEMiS Solvers maintain numeric stability

Innovative Solvers for Unprecedented Numerical Accuracy

For engineers trying to model transients in real-time, the inherent error introduced by currently available fixed-timestep integration algorithms has been a major problem. Variable-step solvers, such as those provided by MATLAB and other advanced mathematical tools, could not be used because of their non-deterministic execution times. The new ARTEMiS fixed-step solvers developed by Opal-RT provide the best of both worlds: real-time performance with variable-step accuracy.

Test Case :

DC to 60 Hz 6-pulse MOSFET converter, PWM control with 1080 Hz carrier, 1 kW , 500 VAR load