Design of a medium voltage protection device using system simulation approaches: a case study

In this case study, we focus on improving the design flow of a Schneider Electric protection device, using modelling and simulation approaches at both the cycle accurate bit accurate (CABA), and the transaction (TLM) modelling levels. We therefore perform hardware/software design space exploration using virtual prototyping for this industrial device to meet its real-time constraints at a low hardware cost, while improving its reliability and robustness by using fault injection techniques. These approaches are demonstrated on a medium voltage protection relay called Sepam10 in order to define evolutions of its architecture that are further validated on an FPGA prototype. This example is considered to be typical of a wide class of protection and safety devices, thus showing that the modelling approaches used in high complexity system on chip (SoC) devices are also of great interest for power electronic board-based control devices.