Exploring the limits of floating-point resolution for hardware-in-the-loop implemented with fpgas
Entity
UAM. Departamento de Tecnología Electrónica y de las ComunicacionesPublisher
MDPI (Basel, Switzerland)Date
2018-09-27Citation
10.3390/electronics7100219
Electronics 7.10 (2018): 219
ISSN
2079-9292DOI
10.3390/electronics7100219Funded by
This research was funded by Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad grant number TEC2013-43017-R.Project
Gobierno de España. TEC2013-43017-R.Editor's Version
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7100219Subjects
Field programmable gate array; Fixed-point; Floating-point; Hardware-in-the-loop; Real-time emulation; InformáticaRights
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Abstract
As the performance of digital devices is improving, Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) techniques are being increasingly used. HIL systems are frequently implemented using FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array) as they allow faster calculations and therefore smaller simulation steps. As the simulation step is reduced, the incremental values for the state variables are reduced proportionally, increasing the difference between the current value of the state variable and its increments. This difference can lead to numerical resolution issues when both magnitudes cannot be stored simultaneously in the state variable. FPGA-based HIL systems generally use 32-bit floating-point due to hardware and timing restrictions but they may suffer from these resolution problems. This paper explores the limits of 32-bit floating-point arithmetics in the context of hardware-in-the-loop systems, and how a larger format can be used to avoid resolution problems. The consequences in terms of hardware resources and running frequency are also explored. Although the conclusions reached in this work can be applied to any digital device, they can be directly used in the field of FPGAs, where the designer can easily use custom floating-point arithmetics.
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Google Scholar:Sánchez González, Alberto
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Todorovich, Elías
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Castro Martín, Ángel de
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