Rapid Prototype with Field Gate (A Design and Implementation of Stepper Motor Using FPGA)

This paper presents the design and implementation of a Stepper Motor using Nexys2 circuit board based on a Xilinx Spartan 3E Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device with VHDL code. The algorithm implemented on FPGA allows a substantial decrease of the equivalent processing time developed by different velocity controllers. The Stepper Speed control is achieved using VHDL code, and the hardware digital circuit is designed for a programmable rotational stepper motor using VHDL as a tool and FPGA as a target technology. The 50 MHZ provided by the starter kit is divided to obtain the necessary delay time between the motor phases that ranges between 2 - 10 m seconds. Though output selections, the direction of rotation of the stepper motor besides the magnitude of the angle of movement and the rotation speed can be controlled. The major advantage of using reconfigurable hardware (FPGA) in implementing the Stepper Motor instead of a discrete digital component is that it makes modifications to the design easy and quick and also, the total design hence represents an embedded system (works without computer). The total programmable hardware design that controlled on the stepper motor movement, occupied an area that did not exceed 12% of the chip resources.

Analysis of the Load Flow Problem in Power System Planning Studies

Load flow is an important tool used by power engineers for planning, to determine the best operation for a power system and exchange of power between utility companies. In order to have an efficient operating power system, it is necessary to determine which method is suitable and efficient for the system’s load flow analysis. A power flow analysis method may take a long time and therefore prevent achieving an accurate result to a power flow solution because of continuous changes in power demand and generations. This paper presents analysis of the load flow problem in power system planning studies. The numerical methods: Gauss-Seidel, Newton-Raphson and Fast Decoupled methods were compared for a power flow analysis solution. Simulation is carried out using Matlab for test cases of IEEE 9-Bus, IEEE 30-Bus and IEEE 57-Bus system. The simulation results were compared for number of iteration, computational time, tolerance value and convergence. The compared results show that Newton-Raphson is the most reliable method because it has the least number of iteration and converges faster.

Design and Implementation of Low-Pass, High-Pass and Band-Pass Finite Impulse Response (FIR) Filters Using FPGA

This paper presents the design and implementation of a low-pass, high-pass and a hand-pass Finite Impulse Response (FIR) Filter using SPARTAN-6 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device. The filter performance is tested using Filter Design and Analysis (FDA) and FIR tools from Mathworks. The FDA Tool is used to define the filter order and coefficients, and the FIR tool is used for Simulink simulation. The FPGA implementation is carried out using Spartan-6 LX75T-3FGG676C for different filter specifications and simulated with the help of Xilinx ISE (Integrated Software Environment). System Generator ISE design suit 14.6i is used in synthesizing and co-simulation for FPGA filter output verification. Finally, comparison is done between the results obtained from the software simulations and those from FPGA using hardware co-simulation. The simulation waveforms and synthesis reports verify the parallel implementation of FPGA which proves its effectiveness in terms of speed, resource usage and power consumption.

Performance and Efficiency Simulation Study of a Smart-Grid Connected Photovoltaic System

The availability of non-renewable energy sources such as crude oil, natural gas, coal etc., is fast diminishing. So the renewable energy sources such as solar, hydropower, geothermal, wind, tidal energy, are gaining more and more importance. Many new developments to convert these renewable energy sources into usable forms are taking place. Most renewable energy sources are used to produce electricity. In this paper, a performance and efficiency simulation study of a smart-grid connected photovoltaic system using Chroma DC programmable power supply, AC programmable source and an Aurora Inverter is proposed. The simulation is performed in MATLAB environment where the Current-Voltage (I-V) and Power-Voltage (P-V) curves from the solar array simulator are generated and plotted. The proposed topology has been verified with satisfactory results. In addition, temperature and irradiance effects on I-V and P-V characteristic curves are verified. Also, the efficiency curves of the photovoltaic grid interface inverter are generated in the study. The MATLAB code developed in this paper is a valuable tool for design engineers comparing different inverters, calculating the optimum efficiency of a given inverter type.

Practical Approaches to Securing an IT Environment

There are a number of IT Security journals available in the literature but none of these research papers have practically specified approaches to secure the IT environment at large. In this paper, more emphases will be laid on the practical ways to secure our IT environments and with some useful real-life scenarios. In today, securing our IT environment has become the key factor in the industry due to an increasing number of attackers invading and stealing the intellectual properties;thereby, rendering most IT industries to go out of businesses. They may find that understanding and translating IT security recommendations to implementable practices can be overwhelming. While this is a worthwhile and important task, there are also more practical ways to ensure you are using IT security best practices in your business. Therefore, the need to properly secure our IT environments in order to mitigate those attacks by using the right tools in all IT domains will be fully discussed in this research. This paper will focus more on protection of LAN-WAN Domain as a use case.

Cost Optimization Modeling of Renewable Energy Sources in Smart-Grid Using SCADA

In recent times, renewable energy production from renewable energy sources is an alternative way to fulfill the increased energy demands. However, the increasing energy demand rate places more pressure, leading to the termination of conventional energy resources. However, the cost of power generation from coal-fired plants is higher than the power generation’s price from renewable energy sources. This experiment is focused on cost optimization during power generation through pumped storage power plant and wind power plant. The entire modeling of cost optimization has been conducted in two parts. The mathematical modeling was done using MATLAB simulation while the hydro and wind power plant’s emulation was performed using SCADA (Supervisory control and data acquisition) designer implementation. The experiment was conducted using ranges of generated power from both power sources. The optimum combination of output power and cost from both generators is determined via MATLAB simulation within the assumed generated output power range. Secondly, the hydro-generator and wind generator’s emulation were executed individually through synchronizing the grid to determine each generator’s specification using SCADA designer, which provided the optimum power generation from both generators with the specific speed, aligning with results generated through MATLAB. Finally, the operational power cost (with no losses consideration) from MATLAB was compared with the local energy provider to determine the cost-efficiency. This experiment has provided the operational cost optimization of the hydro-wind combined power system with stable wind power generation using SCADA, which will ultimately assist in operations of large-scale power systems, remotely minimizing multi-area dynamic issues while maximizing the system efficiency.

Design and Digital Implementation of Controller for PMSM Using Extended Kalman Filter

A novel digital implementation of speed controller for a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) with disturbance rejection using conventional observer combined with Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is proposed. First, the EKF is constructed to achieve a precise estimation of the speed and current from the noisy measurement. Second, a proportional integral derivative (PID) controller is developed based on Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) to achieve speed command tracking performance. Then, an observer is designed and its error is utilized to provide load disturbance compensation. The proposed method greatly enhances the PMSM performance by reducing the control signal variation as well as the disturbance. The speed control performance is significantly improved compared to the case when we have an observer acting alone. The simulation results for the speed response and variation of the states when the PMSM is subjected to the load disturbance are presented. The results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Anti-Windup Digital Control Design for Time-Delayed Analog Nonlinear Systems Using Approximated Scalar Sign Function

This paper describes an approximated-scalar-sign-function-based anti-windup digital control design for analog nonlinear systems subject to input constraints. As input saturation occurs, the non-smooth saturation constraint is modeled with the approximated scalar sign function which is a smooth nonlinear function. The resulting nonlinear model is further linearized at any operating point with the optimal linearization technique, and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) is then applied for a state-feedback controller optimal for each operating point. As input saturation is encountered, an iterative procedure is developed to adjust control gains by systematically updating LQR weighting matrices until the inputs lie within the saturation limits. Through global digital redesign, the analog LQR controller is converted to an equivalent digital one for keeping the essential control performance, and moreover, delay compensation is taken into account during digital redesign for compensating the potential time delays in a control loop. The swing-up and stabilization control of single rotary inverted pendulum system is used to illustrate and verify the proposed method.