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This paper presents the analysis and validation of a real-time ac drive simulator. Real-time simulation has been used for over a decade in power systems engineering to test controllers thoroughly, efficiently, and safely. The development and testing of large ac drives could benefit from this type of simulation, but real-time power system simulators have modeling restrictions preventing stable and accurate simulation of isolated drives switching at high frequencies. These restrictions can be overcome by combining in a single model both the power converter and motor models. After discussing the salient issues related to the real-time simulation of ac drives, a prototype real-time simulator for drives is described. Its ability to accurately emulate the behavior of large drives is demonstrated through two case studies. A first case study demonstrates the feasibility of simulating a drive of typical complexity in real-time. The second case study demonstrates how the controller for a PWM VSI fed induction motor, switching at 4 kHz, is designed, implemented in a microcontroner and tested in real-time using a simulated inverter, motor and load. Comparisons against results obtained with another simulation tool, which uses extremely accurate variable-step integration algorithms, demonstrates the validity of our approach. Index Terms--AC motor drives, hardware-in-the-loop testing, real time simulation, state space methods.

In this letter, the authors present an approach for designing discrete packaging of a bidirectional power switch used in matrix converter applications. The study is based on computing the magnetic field inside a specific resonant switching cell in order to incorporate low-voltage control circuits inside the compact space volume of the power module. The novelty of the proposed configuration is the creation of an oriented magnetic field area, which has very low impact on the low-level control signals of the power devices. Numerical analyses as well as experimental results are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]