Emulation of quadrature and H-bridge signals on an FPGA to enable HiL simulation

One of the problems in control engineering is that a controller in a simulation environment can be different than the actual implemented controller on a microcontroller and the implemented controller can only be tested on the physical plant, which can be dangerous and costly if the controller is not stable or contains a bug. Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) solves this issue because it enables testing of the implemented controller on hardware that simulates the plant in real-time. Such a simulated plant is called a digital twin of the physical plant. If the implemented controller is stable and performs well it can be safely connected to the physical plant.

This individual assignment aims to solve the real-time simulation of the sensor, actuator, and controller input and output on separate hardware. Developing the plant model and the controller is not part of the individual assignment. A Raspberry Pi 4 and an icoboard containing an FPGA provided by the project owner will be used. The FPGA will be programmed using Verilog.