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Simulation tools are of great
assistance to engineers and
researchers and they reduce
product-development cycle time,
improve design quality, and simplify
analysis without costly and time-
consuming
experiments
and
physical setup. Increasing design
complexity, shorter design cycles,
and pressure to reduce costs are
taking design simulation challenges
to the next level. In today’s
design world, a designer cannot
just rely upon the simulation and
optimization of individual blocks and
hope that these different blocks will
work to design specifications when
assembled together. The majority of
system design issues are detected
at the initial prototype stages and
found to be at the interconnect level.
A well-integrated powerful modeling
and simulation environment would
enable designers to identify and
these diverse sets of modules is one
way forward. In this space, MATLAB
offers comprehensive capabilities
to model and simulate automotive
and other mechanical and thermal
modules mathematically, and PSpice
is renowned for its electronics
and power semiconductor device
modeling and simulation capabilities.
The PSpice 17.2-2016 release
enhances the existing PSpice-
MATLAB co-simulation interface to
a well-integrated, bidirectional co-
simulation flow. This flow enables
designers to use these two tools
together in different configurations.
At the initial stages of the HEV
design, the engine and other
mechanical systems are designed
and optimized as standalone blocks
in MATLAB, and all electrical systems
are designed in PSpice as standalone
modules. A typical HEV electrical
system consists of a battery, power
Reduce Your System-Level Design Verification Effort
Using PSpice and MATLAB Integration
Kishore Karnane and Alok Tripathi, Cadence
correct these issues at the design
stage.
Any conventional electronics or
electro-mechanical system can
be modeled mathematically or
electrically. Let’s take the example
of a Hybrid Electrical Vehicle (HEV)
system to understand this better. The
design for such a system requires
modeling and simulation capabilities
for various non-electrical systems,
such as engine, transmission, fuel
consumption and emission control,
braking, and a variety of electrical
systems. The electrical systems
include inverters, converters, control
logic that uses semiconductor
devices (such as IGBT and precision
electronics components), ADC/DAC,
etc.
Currently, no single tool offers the
ability to model and simulate both
systems together. Co-simulation
between different toolsets to model
28 l New-Tech Magazine Europe