Modeling and Verification of Dependable Electronic Power System Architecture

The electronic power system can be viewed as a system composed of a set of concurrently interacting subsystems to generate, transmit, and distribute electric power. The complex interaction among sub-systems makes the design of electronic power system complicated. Furthermore, in order to guarantee the safe generation and distribution of electronic power, the fault tolerant mechanisms are incorporated in the system design to satisfy high reliability requirements. As a result, the incorporation makes the design of such system more complicated. We propose a dependable electronic power system architecture, which can provide a generic framework to guide the development of electronic power system to ease the development complexity. In order to provide common idioms and patterns to the system *designers, we formally model the electronic power system architecture by using the PVS formal language. Based on the PVS model of this system architecture, we formally verify the fault tolerant properties of the system architecture by using the PVS theorem prover, which can guarantee that the system architecture can satisfy high reliability requirements. KeywordsSystem Architecture; PVS System; Fault Tolerance; Formal Modeling; Formal Verification.

Electronic system architectures have traditionally been documented as static block diagrams in tools such as Microsoft <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">®</sup> Visio <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">®</sup> or through a richer modeling approach such as Systems Modeling Language (SysML). These approaches did not fully meet the modeling needs for the Gulfstream authors, which led to an alternative approach. This paper introduces the Electronic System Architecture Modeling (eSAM) method, which leverages a new system architecture modeling tool called System Composer™. eSAM was created by the authors to define a standard method for applying the generic System Composer modeling constructs to build functional, physical, and logical architecture models of electronic systems. The eSAM methods are applied to an example avionics architecture to demonstrate capabilities needed for system modeling, collaborative OEM-supplier workflows, data management and ICD generation, systems integration activities, generation of system architecture deliverables for the avionics certification standards governed by SAE ARP4754A, and a Model-Based Design approach that connects a software function to its system-level ICD. System Composer is built on MATLAB <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">®</sup> and Simulink <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">®</sup> and leverages the modeling, analysis, and simulation capabilities of these well-established tools. System Composer adds additional capabilities for modeling integration between systems, filtering large models into manageable views, capturing important system and component properties, allocating between different descriptive architecture models, directly connecting system architecture models to software functional models, and flowing data down into specialized design tools. This paper summarizes desirable features in system architecture modeling tools, introduces the features and concepts of System Composer and describes application of the eSAM method.

Power electronic systems have become a key component in the efficient generation, distribution, storage, and use of energy. This increasingly places power electronic systems in harsh environments under elevated stress conditions where, in many cases, their reliable operation is now mission critical. The semiconductor material conventionally used, silicon, possesses limited capability for high temperature applications due to its small bandgap. Power electronic components based on wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductors, such as SiC and GaN, can be operated reliably at higher temperatures. Furthermore, WBG devices have higher breakdown voltages and switching frequencies, rendering them more ideal switches and rectifiers for highefficiency as well as low-volume and low-weight systems. Yet, new packaging concepts are required to make use of the high temperature capability of power electronic systems based on WBG semiconductor devices. In this paper, a summary of the progress in the development and commercialization of wide bandgap power components and power electronic systems is given. The properties of SiC and GaN components are compared to those based on silicon. The shortcomings of conventional power electronic packaging technologies are analyzed, and alternatives introduced and compared. An overview of research is given on Transient Liquid Phase Sintering (TLPS), a promising interconnect technology for the manufacturing of WBG and high temperature power electronic systems. TLPS is a liquid-assisted sintering process during which a low melting temperature constituent melts, surrounds, and diffuses in a high melting temperature constituent. Intermetallic compounds with high melting temperatures are formed by liquid-solid diffusion. Interconnect systems can be processed at low temperatures but are capable of operating at the high melting temperatures of the intermetallic compound. Different process approaches are contrasted and material systems compared. Latest results of research on paste-based low temperature TLPS are presented. The pastes assessed are based on the Cu-Sn and Ni-Sn material systems. It is shown that joints formed by TLPS remain strong up to 600°C and exhibit softening temperatures far higher than conventional interconnect technologies. They show minimum creep and possess very limited voiding. The process does not require an inert or reducing atmosphere or vacuum and is compatible with standard reflow soldering equipment. It shows good wettability to common metallizations such as Cu, Ni, Ag, and ENIG. This attach technology shows the potential to enable reliable operation of wide bandgap power electronic systems under high stress conditions.

Power electronics can enable dramatic improvements in marine platforms and ships - increased power, greater automation, with enhanced capabilities and missions. Systems with many power electronic components are emerging, driven by the need for power quality, availability, security, and efficiency. Mechanical ship propulsion systems are being replaced by electric propulsion. Variable speed motor drives are replacing across-the-line motor starters to save energy and decrease load induced instabilities. Uninterruptible power supplies are used everywhere to maintain power continuity and quality. Offshore and deep ocean platforms use many electrical motors for sea keeping and maneuvering. Marine based renewable energy concepts such as tidal and wave power generation and offshore wind farms are emerging. In all the complexity and detail of these is increasing dramatically. Todaypsilas rule-based design processes is no longer adequate. New power electronic system architectures and design concepts are the key to these advances. This paper analyzes these issues and offers solutions in the form of new ideas such as Medium Voltage DC distribution, MVDC, and a ldquorelationalrdquo design process, enabled by physics-based modeling and simulation. Paper also describes the Marine Industries Subcommittee activities in these areas and other related IEEE activities.

Welcome to the DATE 08 Conference Proceedings. DATE combines the world's favourite electronic systems design conference and Europe's leading international exhibition for electronic design, automation and test, from system level hardware and software implementation right down to integrated circuit design. The DATE 08 event features a technical program with 77 sessions covering the latest developments in system design and embedded software, IC design/test methodologies and EDA tools, together with an exhibition with the leading EDA, silicon and IP providers showing their new products and services. Challenges that you all face or soon will face in your daily practice are the increasing design complexity of highly integrated systems, the introduction of reconfigurability and embedded software, and the control of power and variability in nanometer IC designs. All these issues will be addressed in this year's DATE event. For the 11th successive year DATE has prepared an exciting technical programme, with the help of the more than 400 members of the Technical Programme Committee, who dedicated their time to thoroughly review the 839 submissions in 37 topics, ranging from system level down to circuit design and covering all the most relevant application domains. The submissions are organised in 4 major areas: D --- Design Methods, Tools, Algorithms and Languages A --- Application Design T --- Test Methods, Tools and Innovative Experiences E --- Embedded Software After a thorough review and selection process (with an average of 5 reviews per paper), finally 198 regular papers were selected for presentation at the conference. Additionally, there are 46 Interactive Presentations that are organised in 5 IP sessions. Together with the invited special sessions (panels, embedded tutorials and hot topic sessions), this has resulted in a high-quality technical program. The technical program provides a wide but high-quality coverage of design, design automation and test topics, from the system level to the integrated circuit level. Compared with previous years, submissions in the Embedded Software track has increased by 50%, showing a clear trend towards a comprehensive system design focus with integrated hardware and software solutions. DATE has established itself firmly as a true Electronic System Design Conference. This year the conference is held in Germany, at the ICM in Munich and spans an entire working week from Monday March 10 to Friday March 14. On Monday, eleven pre-conference tutorials will be given. The three-full day tutorials cover topics of great interest for system design. The first tutorial deals with techniques to automatically realising embedded system from high-level functional models. The second tutorial addresses the different issues related to communication based design and architectures in automotive electronic systems. The third tutorial discusses several key concepts on system-level design and application mapping for wireless and multimedia MPSoC architectures. Furthermore, eight half-day tutorials are also given, which cover a wide spectrum of topics on specification, modelling, design and test. The main conference opens on Tuesday March 11, with two very interesting and complementary keynote speeches. Dominique Vernay, Chief Technical Officer for Thales, will talk about the challenges of embedded systems design, and Giovanni de Micheli, Professor at EPFL, will present his views on designing micro/nano systems for a safer and healthier tomorrow. On the same day, the Executive Track offers a series of business panels with executives discussing hot topics in design: the perils of 45 nanometers, the changes in EDA strategies from IDM, to fablite to fabless, and embedded systems level design strategies. DATE 08 will again offer two specific days related to special themes. On Wednesday March 12, a special full-day track is devoted to Automotive Electronics---Software and Architecture. This special-day track will focus on the challenges faced by the automotive supply chain with particular attention to system and software architecture design. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of automotive architectures, including ECUs, sensors and communication standards and discusses how new methods, tools and standards for interoperability and component-based design can deal with the increasing complexity of software systems and their need for reliability and guaranteed timely behaviour. In addition, it addresses to what degree existing standards, including AUTOSAR and FLEXRAY and model-based development, can support the development of safety and time-critical software. On Thursday March 13, a second special full-day track focuses on Dependable Embedded Systems. This track will address both conceptual and applied issues for design, analysis and validation of dependable embedded systems. The utility of embedded systems and services is based, in large part, on our depending on their sustained functionality in spite of the encountered operational or malicious disruptions. As the number of transient and also permanent disruptions (given the decreasing device geometries, higher device density, lower voltage latching, faster clocks etc) is expected to increase substantially, this will not only be a key issue for the hardware community but also the systems community in general. Solutions using a combination of hardware and software might be more effective than hardware-only or software-only solutions. This track focuses on both conceptual and applied issues for design, analysis and validation of dependable embedded systems. Besides these special tracks, the main conference is organized in six parallel tracks of sessions, three devoted to design methods, tools, algorithms and languages, one to application design, one to test methods, tools and innovative experiences, and finally one to embedded software. The presentations of the selected regular papers in these parallel tracks are complemented by nine Special Sessions and two Invited Industrial Sessions. The special sessions are organized in the form of panels, hot topics, and embedded tutorials. The topics to be covered include quantitative evaluation for embedded systems design, design and manufacturing at 32 and 22nm, software for wireless networked embedded systems, test challenges for low power devices, quantitative productivity measurement in IC design, and 3D Integration. The two invited industrial sessions deal with industrial system designs in transportation and information technologies. To emphasise that DATE is the major event for the designers, DATE 08 features also invited sessions where Europe's famous consumer industry presents their best designs and design practices. Friday March 14 is the day for the DATE workshops. DATE 08 offers workshops on current and emerging important issues in design, test, EDA and software to complement the regular conference. They provide a unique opportunity for the various research and design communities to spend a day discussing the latest and the best, sharing their experiences and visions. This year's workshop program includes eight workshop themes. Four workshops are related to software engineering, ranging from dependable software to modelling, analysis and development tools. Four other workshop themes cover a variety of topics such as the impact of process variations on design and test, the merging world of Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems, new directions in high level synthesis, and heterogeneous reconfigurable hardware. Each workshop features presentations, invited or submitted, from highly distinguished academic and industrial researchers. Finally, throughout the conference days, DATE offers a comprehensive overview of commercial design and verification tools in its large exhibition hall. Exhibitors include EDA vendors, silicon, FPGA and IP providers showing their new products and services. In addition, there is an Exhibition Theatre featuring talks from engineering managers of the leading electronic manufacturers on first-hand design experiences of commercial EDA tools. New this year is the European projects village where different European and large government funded projects will be able to show their ongoing research and results to the design community and have the opportunity for internal meetings and discussions. The DATE week will be also an opportunity for students and universities to show their research work, through the PhD Forum on Monday evening and the University Booth where hardware and software demonstrations will be shown by different universities on a rotation schedule. The DATE 08 event's program will be particularly attractive to industrial designers, at analog, IC, FPGA and embedded system level, as well as software designers, to researchers and academics as well as to design managers, and an increasing attendance is expected. We therefore invite you to take full advantage of the many opportunities offered to you by DATE 08, to extend your knowledge and/or business in electronic system's design and to exploit the abundant networking possibilities offered to socialise with colleagues, including fringe meetings and a memorable social party with bands and dancing. We hope that you will all enjoy the DATE 08 Conference and Exhibition.

Passive filter design is traditionally considered to be very important for many power electronic circuits and power systems. It is is very critical in the design of these power electronic circuits and power systems to know how to obtain accurate corner frequencies. It is known that when the load is large, the inductance of an inductor is known to always change. This phenomenon is due to the fact that when the current load is high, the inductance always suffers from saturation or hystersis. It is extremely difficult to estimate the actual value for the nonlinear inductance in large currents because the inductance is nonlinear. The paper investigates the saturation phenomenon for a nonlinear inductance. The describing function method can be used to linearise the nonlinear inductor and then estimate the inductance in large current situations. Hence, the corner frequency for the low-pass filter can also be calculated accurately. It is shown that, when the current is very large, the corner frequency drifts to a larger value in the low-pass filter. The drift value of the corner frequency can be easily calculated by the describing function. Simulation and experimental results verify this phenomenon. However, it should be stressed that the method used in the paper is restricted to low frequencies. The higher frequency effects are neglected throughout the paper.

In the last few years, the design of power electronics systems has been towards modularity. The focus has been on finding solutions for integration of distributed power electronics systems. Distributed systems set new requirements for control systems compared with the traditional centralized solutions. Using intelligent power electronics building blocks as a basis for power electronics systems results in reduced cost, easier reconfiguration, and improved reliability. A cascaded ring topology has become a prominent control solution. In many applications, accurate synchronization of the building blocks is of crucial importance; it is therefore essential to understand the factors that affect the synchronization accuracy. This paper addresses ring topology synchronization methods and the factors that define the overall synchronization accuracy. A new time-stamping-based synchronization method is presented, and its accuracy and jitter behavior are analyzed. Experimental results of synchronization jitter of the proposed method are presented.

Development in biomechatronic technology has brought man-machine into close proximity. As the human-robot interaction has enhanced in past few decades, exoskeletons have started to emerge as a promising possibility for improving the human capabilities, assisting the ailing and supporting the heavy physical labour by reducing the fatigue. These systems are anthropomorphically designed so that they can be used in concomitance with human bodies natural structure, without hindering the movements. Our team has designed and created a proof of concept, ‘Passive Lower Body Exoskeleton’, In order to make this sophisticated technology, sustainable, durable and at the same time user-friendly. This Exoskeleton is using two way ratchets at various joints to facilitate the force transfer due to the payload. The weight carried by the wearer is transmitted to the ground without stressing the hips, knees and ankle joint. This passive lower body exoskeleton is not a power-enhancing or the augmentation device, it assists the wearer to transmit the load to the ground using locking and unlocking of ratchet at each joint. As the passive exoskeleton does not use the actuator for its working, minimum energy is required for actuating servo for locking and unlocking the joint reducing the battery consumption and increasing the operational period, while reducing the inertia of the device In this paper, we discuss the design of the mechanical system and electronic system architecture in the first half of the paper. We discuss the simulation and analysis of the system along with the parameter correlation and design of experiments simulation using ANSYS in the next half of the paper. Finally, we conclude the paper with opportunities in developing the exoskeleton further.

Electrical energy conversion by power electronic systems can be classified into the following four categories: 1. Voltage conversion and power conversion for both direct current (DC) and alternate current (AC) 2. Frequency conversion 3. Wave-shape conversion 4. Poly-phase conversion.

Most of the researchers working on power electronic converters and inverter system, in the present technology power electronic converters and inverters have many limitations in industrial applications. Industrial applications needs high torque, long life and high reliability power electronic systems. It is very difficult task of designing the power electronic system to meet the industrial demands, although many factors and parameters which are adversely contribute to minimize the efficiency and life time of the system. The major factors involved to obtain an efficient power transmission, are the dominant factor of harmonics that disturb the required voltage waveform. This work highlights the methods and analysis of harmonics and THD of the five Phase PWM drive, the reduction harmonics has been obtained by the PWM Inverter, this is done by studying THD with LC filter and DC level capacitor voltage balancing scheme using MATLAB programming. The harmonic distortion has been reduced and compared with normal PWM drive is presented in this paper.

The design of a radiation-hardened electronic system is in many ways no different from the design of electronic systems which must perform correctly while exposed to the more standard environments, such as temperature, vibration, and humidity. The early recognition of shock, vibration, temperature, humidity, and acceleration as environments which would influence electrical performance of the electronic systems has resulted in a thorough understanding of how to design against these environments. The reader familiar with electronic design in the more standard environments should endeavor to apply good design techniques from these environments to that of nuclear radiation, when the techniques seem applicable. This is seldom possible, since the radiation environment is in most ways quite unique, though there are instances where the approach can be used. For example, the design of electronics for operation in high temperatures (100 to 600°C) will also result in an electronic system which can withstand large integrated particle doses without degradation. The application of failure probability analysis, which is quite common for the more standard environments, has been generally neglected in work associated with the nuclear radiation environment. The importance of the failure probability analysis cannot be stressed enough. The single or few test sample determinations of component radiation sensitivity may be adequate early in the design cycle of a particular electronic system. However, toward the end of the design cycle, large test sample determination is a must in order to establish high confidence in the component selection for production units of the electronic system.

With the continuous development of power electronic power systems, the dynamic characteristics of power systems become much more complex, which may cause wide-band oscillation problems. However, due to the constraints of Nyquist sampling theorem and communication bandwidth, it is difficult for the existing dynamic monitoring devices to transmit and monitor wide-band oscillation signals. In this paper, a method for wide-band oscillation data compression and restoration identification based on autoencoder is proposed. Firstly, the encoder is used at the sub-station to reduce the dimension of the measurement data. On the one hand, it is convenient to carry out the wide-band oscillation signal transmission with the existing bandwidth. On the other hand, it also effectively reduces the redundancy of the oscillation data. On this basis, the master station uses the decoder to restore and identify the uploaded compressed data, which can not only verify the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method, but also enable the master station to conduct a more comprehensive monitoring and analysis of wide-band oscillation. Finally, case study is carried out in the four-machine and two-area system with a wind farm. The results show that the method can be applied to the data transmission of subsynchronous, supersynchronous and even medium/high frequency oscillation, and has high restoration accuracy and good anti-noise performance.

The advancement of power electronics in recent years is largely attributed to the development of semiconductor components and new architectures for energy conversion systems. Among these, multicellular converters — which use a series connection of elementary switching cells — have gained significant attention This connection enables higher power processing without increasing stress on the switches, while also improving the output signal quality. However, managing the voltages across floating capacitors in these systems requires precise control. This paper proposes a hybrid modeling and control approach for a multicellular converter with three cells. The hybrid automaton model integrates both continuous and discrete dynamics, making it an effective tool for modeling power electronic systems with Boolean control inputs. Simulation results highlight the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid approach in overcoming voltage control and operational complexities in multicellular converters. By providing a novel solution to voltage control challenges, this modeling framework paves the way for advanced control solutions in power electronics applications. The findings demonstrate notable improvements in efficiency and response times, reinforcing the potential of hybrid modeling in optimizing power electronic systems.

Power electronics are used to minimize losses in converting the energy produced by the generator in a wind turbine, and to drive motors that control the pitch and yaw of the wind turbine to ensure maximum power extraction. The power electronic system is based on a series of three-phase pulse width modulated (PWM) power modules consisting of IGBT power switches and associated diodes that are soldered to a ceramic substrate and interconnected with wirebonds. The design of the packaging and cooling of the power electronics is crucial to enhancing the energy efficiency and the reliability of the electronics, which generate heat loads in the hundreds of watts/cm2, and are often placed in harsh and inaccessible offshore environments. Without adequate heat removal, the increase in device temperature will reduce the efficiency of power electronic devices leading to thermal runaway and eventual failure of the entire power electronic system. Furthermore, the increased temperatures can lead to failure of the packaging elements as well. This paper will provide an overview of the fundamental packaging level mechanisms that can cause failures in the power electronic system. These include wirebond and lead fatigue, die attach fatigue, substrate cracking, and lead bonding fatigue.

To face the growing complexity of technical systems, engineers have to design models in order to perform simulations. To avoid inconsistencies, the integration of different models coming from various engineering disciplines is one of nowadays main industrial challenges. In this article we present model synchronization, a framework to ensure consistency between models coming from different engineering domains, based on S2ML (System Structure Modeling Language). We show how the introduced framework can be used to handle consistency between system architecture models (using SysML language), safety models (using AltaRica 3.0 language) and multi-physics simulation models (using Modelica language).