MPSoC: The Low-cost Approach to Real-time Hardware Simulations for Power and Energy Systems

This paper conceptually describes a promising approach to real-time hardware simulations applicable to power and energy systems based on a MultiProcessor System on Chip (MPSoC) embedded platform. An MPSoC offers a high-performance processing system that consists of high-performance multicore application and real-time processors, a dedicated graphics core, and programmable logic; all included in a single device. Although conventional hardware simulators enable system modeling and data acquisition in a constrained environment, this method furtherly reduces the required external hardware dramatically decreasing development costs, which is crucial in application fields which requires low-cost solutions such as in research and education. The objective of this study is to summarize the features of an existing MPSoC, Zynq UltraScale+, and the software virtualization methods which provides robust partitioning to ensure concurrency between each multicore processor. This will serve as a helpful reference for readers to understand the technology and its relevance to different power and energy system applications. Also, to visually illustrate the implementation concept of an MPSoC-based real-time hardware simulator, system decomposition and software deployment for a grid-connected single-phase inverter is provided.