Real-Time Simulation using PC-based Kernels
Fabian M. Uriarte Karen L. Butler-Purry
Student Member, IEEE
 Traditionally, system modeling in real-time has depended
Abstract—National Instruments and The MathWorks, Inc.
make PC real-time simulation possible with the use of real-time
kernels. In this work, a small three-phase radial power system is
modeled and simulated using these real-time environments to
determine the feasibility, accuracy, and determinism of boot-
loaders as an alternative to costly real-time simulators for
smaller systems. Implications and modeling methodologies of
simulating the power system in real-time using PCs are discussed
providing a discussion at the end comparing both products for
the interested public.
Index Terms—GRT, ETS, matlab, NI, PC, PXI, power, real-
time, simulink, system, xPC
I. INTRODUCTION
T he use of real-time simulators is increasingly becoming
more popular as hardware-in-the-loop prototyping has
proven as a reliable design tool, a decrease in time to
market products, and as a safe low-cost experimental
alternative to potentially damaging equipment. However, the
modeling of complex systems in real-time can limit the ability
of processors to respond deterministically. For instance, when
power systems containing a large number of differential
elements, switches, non-linear elements, or machines as it is in
common practice, are attempted to run in real-time, the
processor can easily overload. This is due, in part, by the
rather large system matrices, number of switches forcing
topological changes, small step-size, and finite processor
speed and memory availability. If the real-time simulation
cannot solve for the unknowns within the allocated time-step
ǻt, the simulation cannot be considered successful. Data
logging also plays an important role as it must occur after the
system’s solution but before ǻt elapses. One way to get
around the large real-time burden’s that computers face when
modeling complex systems is to use faster and costly real-time
simulators [1, 2]. A downside, though, with an investment of
this magnitude is the uncertainty of the vendor in defining the
limit of the system that can be modeled in real-time. Instead,
vendors normally provide with example networks that are
known to work. The end-user then has to asses whether the
example network is comparable in burden to the one intended
to be modeled.
This work was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research (ONR)
grant # N0014-01-1-0760.
F. M. Uriarte and Karen L. Butler-Purry are with the Power System
Automation Lab of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at
Texas A&M University (e-mail: fabian@tamu.edu, klbutler@ee.tamu.edu,
URL: http://psalserver.tamu.edu).
1­4244­0178­X/06/$20.00 ©2006 IEEE
Senior Member, IEEE
on dedicated hardware serving as the real-time engine, target,
or devoted processor. These real-time engines typically vary
from DSP processor boards [3-7], PC-based clusters [8-10],
FPGA processor boards [11] or specialized target boxes [12,
13] and are normally limited to small plants. The use of
stand-alone PCs in the past, too, has limited the ability to
model power systems in real-time due to processor speed and
memory size unless the schematics were of simple to moderate
complexity [14]. Instead, the role of the PC has traditionally
been to serve as the graphical user-interface depending on
external hardware to produce the real-time simulation.
In this work we intend to provide with a comparison of two
different PC-based real-time simulation schemes and give an
idea of when a PC may start to overload when used as a real-
time simulator. The two real-time kernels by National
Instruments (NI) and The MathWorks, Inc are investigated by
modeling a small radial three-phase power system. In section
II, a description of the radial power system model is given,
including load and component information. In section III, the
real-time environment is described providing information
about the products reviewed, their implementation
implications, and requirements to run. In section IV three
case studies show the mismatches (if any) of the real-time
simulation output, and in section V a comparative table
summarizes the important aspects of implementation of these
kenel-based real-time simulators.
II. POWER SYSTEM MODEL
The power system modeled is small-scale distribution
feeder at Drexel University (DU) and is represented by Fig. 1.
The system consists of a visible disconnect switch (main
breaker), an autotransformer serving for isolation and voltage
regulation, two parallel transmission lines, and three loads.
The loads were a 5HP induction motor loaded to 10N-m, a
light-bulb bank, and a series-connected inductor cart. The
transmission line, light-bulb bank, and inductor cart all have
switches that can change their effective impedance.
Information about the loads can be found in Table 1 and Table
2.
1991 PSCE 2006

Fig. 1. Single-phase representation of power system
modeled offline and in real-time using targets GRT, xPC,
and ETS.
TABLE 1 - LIGHT-BULB BANK IMPEDANCE
PER NUMBER OF LIGHT BULBS IN PARALLEL
Bulbs 5 10 20 30 40 50
R (Ÿ) 41.808 22.726 12.934 8.9825 7.10625 5.88125 5.035
TABLE 2 - INDUCTOR CART IMPEDANCE (IN OHMS)
FOR ALL TAP SETTINGS (ROWS REPRESENT PHASES ABC)
Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap
1 2 3 4 5
1.45+j11.84 3.37+j23.18 4.65+j34.4 6.78+j45.11 9.92+j56.44
1.49+j11.95 3.14+j23.14 5+j34.48 6.55+j45.32 9.39+j56.7
1.35+j11.94 2.96+j23.39 4.73+j34.59 6.36+j45.35 9.24+j56.73
III. REAL-TIME ENVIRONMENT
The Real-Time Workshop® (RTW) by The MathWorks,
Inc. [15] allows power system models built with the
MATLAB/SIMULINK SimPowerSystems® library [16] to be
compiled into machine language. The resulting code can
then be embedded in any of the targets made available by the
RTW (the term ‘target’ refers to the destination processor
where the compiled code executes). The three targets tested in
this work are (as listed in the RTW’s options) ‘grt.tlc’,
‘xpctarget.tlc’, and ‘nidll.tlc’.
Both companies The MathWorks, Inc. and NI make
available boot-loader real-time kernels that convert standard
off-the-shelf PCs into real-time simulators. The reviewed
products by The MathWorks, Inc. are the Generic Real-Time
Target (GRT) and xPC Target (xPC). The GRT is not a boot-
loader, but instead a way of running real-time simulations
under Windows and is used in this work as an additional
comparison. xPC takes a standard off-the-shelf-PC and
converts it solely into a real-time simulator by loading a real-
time operating system kernel from a floppy disk; this machine
is commonly referred to as the target-PC. Then, with the use
of another PC (a host-PC), one can embed simulations onto
the target-PC, command simulations to start and stop, and
observe the results during or post-simulation. The product by
NI is similar to xPC, a boot-loader real-time operating system
kernel called Venturcom Phar Lap Embedded Tool Suite
(ETS). ETS is actually made by a 3rd party company but is
partially supported and made available through NI.
The real-time environments used here, then, consist of the
comparison between and 3 different real-time simulations
schemes: two by The MathWorks, Inc. (1.GRT, real-time
simulation in Windows and 2.xPC, a boot-loader real-time
kernel) and one by NI (ETS, a boot-loader real-time kernel).
A detailed description of each of these now follows.
A. GRT
The MathWorks, Inc. makes a fast-prototyping real-time
simulation target called the GRT for use on a host-PC (a
target-PC is not required). The GRT allows a computer
running MATLAB/SIMULINK® to temporarily isolate the
operating system from background processes and carry a real-
time simulation in Windows. As can be expected, in lieu of
the operating system and running background processes, not
much available processor power is available for a
deterministic real-time simulation. Further, system interrupts
are not completely isolated during a GRT run. Therefore
using this target for real-time simulations is limited to models
60 of simple complexity or models in which network
reductions/optimizations can be afforded.
Previous work [17] showed that a power system of about
90 states and 70 switches could be reduced to achieve a real-
time simulation in Windows. The reductions included
removing unused switches, removing system islands (groups
of elements behind open switches), and forming equivalent
impedances where possible. An advantage of the GRT is that
it allows for time-steps not achievable (for our model’s size)
with boot-loaders. With the GRT, a real-time simulation best
of ǻt=50µs was possible though ǻt=750µs was used during
this study to match it to the boot-loader real-time simulations.
The advantages of the GRT are its fast implementation for
prototyping, small ǻt, one PC requirement, that it runs under
Windows, and its free cost (ships with the RTW). Some
disadvantages include its reduced determinism, small model
size limitation, lack of TCP/IP communication, interaction,
and parameter tuning during run-time. The settings used for
the GRT simulation are listed in Table 3.
TABLE 3 - GRT’S REAL-TIME SIMULATION SETTINGS
Step type Fixed
Solver type Ode5 (Dormand-Prince)
Simulation type Discrete
Step size 750µs
Periodic sample time constant Unconstrained
Fixed step-size Auto
(fundamental sample time)
Tasking mode Auto
for periodic sample times
Real-time target grt.tlc
C compiler MS Visual C/C++ 6.0
B. xPC Target
xPC Target is a boot-loader real-time kernel that transforms
a standard off-the-shelf PC into a dedicated real-time
simulator. The boot-loader starts-up a PC using the xPC
Target real-time operating system through a floppy disk
ensuring devoted processing power since Windows is not
loaded. The simulation settings of the xPC environment are
given in Table 4. As listed under xPC Target Mode, the
polling option was chosen. The polling mode of xPC is a
1992
primitive (or brute-force) mode of operation that is designed
to execute target applications at samples times close to the
limit of the CPU, interrupt-free, accurately, and with neither
overflow nor latency [18]. The advantage of this mode of
operation is its determinism for complex models such as DSP,
control, or power applications while its main disadvantage is
that it shuts down all communication (tuning and data display)
during run-time. Polling mode was only used because the
model was large and streaming real-time data was not of
interest.
TABLE 4 - XPC TARGET REAL-TIME SIMULATION SETTINGS
xPC Target 2.6.1
C compiler MS Visual C/C++ 6.0
Max Model Size 1MB
Host Target Comm. TCP/IP
Target Scope Enabled
Target Mouse None
TCP/IP Target Driver I82559
TCP/IP Bus Type PCI
Step type Fixed
Solver type Ode5 (Dormand-Prince)
Simulation type Discrete
Step size 750µs
Execution Model Real-Time
Real-Time interrupt source Timer
xPC Target Mode Polling
TLC Option -axpcCPUClockPoll=1700
C. ETS
Made available by NI while produced by [19], ETS
converts a PC into a real-time simulator. The principle is
similar to xPC Target’s, except that ETS requires a secondary
FAT32 / IDE hard-drive (not so common anymore) to log data
and receive files from the host-PC. The target-PC is treated as
a PXI device by NI and thus requires additional software to be
installed on it such as NI-VISA Server and LabVIEW’s Real-
Time Module for communication purposes. Also, a boot-disk
for a PXI device must be created to boot the target-PC. The
communication from the host-PC to the target-PC is via
TCP/IP and has a more complete settings user-interface
(called Measurement and Automation Explorer or MAX) for
file management than xPC Target’s (called xPC Explorer). A
product by NI called the Simulation Interface Toolkit (SIT) is
required to make possible the connection between a
LabVIEW’s virtual interface (VI) Simulink models. When
the SIT is installed on the host-PC, it adds a target to the RTW
appearing as ‘nidll.tlc’. When selected, the Simulink model is
compiled into a .DLL file which is then embedded onto the
target-PC; in this case the target-PC running ETS. One can
use the original LabVIEW interface associated (via SIT) with
an offline power system model in Windows to interact with
the real-time simulation in ETS; this is one of the main
attractions of ETS.
The logging of data by ETS can be streamed to the VI
controlling the real-time simulation without loss of
determinism by using RT-FIFO programming techniques [20].
These techniques create timed priority loops that allow the
processor to write data, if possible and when available, by
giving priorities to certain events. A problem with this is that
it requires somewhat advanced LabVIEW understanding to
1993
accomplish. The data from the real-time runs was logged to a
delimited .TXT file. Although a smaller ǻt was possible with
ETS, it was matched to xPC’s for comparison purposes to
compare equal time steps.
IV. CASE STUDIES
To determine the validity of the results in real-time, offline
simulation results with variable ǻt using the ode23t solver
were used for comparison. The offline, xPC, and ETS
simulations were able to simulate the system of Fig. 1 as a
whole while GRT required the optimizations noted. A table
comparing the whole and reduced-sized models is given in
Table 5.
TABLE 5 - SCHEMATIC INFORMATION FOR SYSTEM OF FIG. 1
Whole Reduced
(Offline, xPC and ETS) (GRT)
States* 85 10
Inputs 71 11
Outputs 74 14
Switches 66 6
*MATLAB/SIMULINK® uses a state-space based instead of nodal-based realization for the
system’s solution
A. Cas e A
The first study produced transients during system startup by
closing and re-opening the master breaker. The observable
variable was the line voltage at the receiving-end as shown in
Fig. 2. During steady-state no differences were noted between
any of the four curves but during the master breaker’s
switching times, small transient differences are picked up by
the offline simulation but not by the fixed-step schemes (these
are shown encircled). For the study in question, the offline
results are considered correct since produced under variable
step simulation conditions using the entire schematic as shown
in Table 5. Even though the GRT schematic was of different
size, it didn’t produce major differences in regards to xPC and
ETS in this case. The major differences in this case were
produced by switching (a color printout is recommended to
distinguish the traces).
B. Case B
The second case disconnected all loads from the receiving-
end bus and observed the line voltage as shown in Fig. 3. No
differences in steady-state were observed either and only a
minor under-shoot in Vab at the time of disconnection was
noticed. During the exponential decay, the fixed-step schemes
loss some phase accuracy in Vab while in the other phases it
was not noticed as much. Overall, the results are in good
agreement. The GRT even with its optimized model didn’t
show any differences in transient realm either. xPC and ETS
produced identical results again.
C. Case C
The third study starts with the master breaker closed and
shows the steady-state load bus current. Transients are
produced by switching the inductor cart from tap 4-to-1 at
t=0.8s and switching the light-bulb bank from tap 5-to-7 at
t=0.85s. All simulations produced identical results. The only
difference was a small overshoot in phase a’s current during
the offline simulation; steady-state and transient results shown
good agreement. noticed. A table comparing these facts and other important
facts is presented in Table 6.

Fig. 2. Case A – Start-up receiving-end line voltage when

the master breaker is closed and re-opened (differences
enclosed). Fig. 4. Case C - Line current when switching inductor cart
from tap 4-to-1 at t=0.8s and light-bulb bank from tap 5-
to-7 at t=0.85s (differences enclosed).
TABLE 6. DIFFERENCES OF INTEREST
BETWEEN THE REAL-TIME SCIMULATION SCHEMES
Characteristic GRT xPC ETS
Determinism Poor Best Good
ǻt Smaller Largest Larger
Simulink model size Smaller Larger Largest
TCP/IP streaming No Yes Yes
Allows run-time No Yes/No* Yes
parameter tuning
Hardware-in-the-loop No Yes Yes
capability
Transient and phase Ok Ok Ok
accuracy
Level of implementation Easier Moderate Harder
CPU overload warning No Yes No
message
Data logging, to: MATLAB MATLAB .TXT file
workspace workspace
Fig. 3. Case B -Receiving-end line voltage when Real-time environment None Good (xPC Better (MAX)
disconnecting all loads at once (noted differences are manager friendliness and Explorer)
enclosed). (name)
Software req’d (in None xPC Target LabVIEW, SIT,
The GRT used a simplified model of the system. The addition to RTW) VISA, RT-Module,
simplifications included using equivalent impedances and ETS
removing elements behind open switches. xPC and ETS Will run even if not in Yes No No**
simulations used the whole model including all switches, used real-time
and unused, and all possible differential elements. One of the Number of PCs required 1 2 2
*parameter tuning not available in polling mode
advantages of using xPC is its true determinism; the fact that it **Real-time FIFO VI’s required, else simulation may run in non-real time without
takes the same amount of time to simulate every time and that warning
it wont simulate if it cant guarantee a solution and logging in
<ǻt. With the GRT, it depends on what other applications are
running and the system’s available resources at the time of V. CONCLUSIONS
simulation. Without simplifications, the GRT could not Modeling implications, methodology, comparison and
produce results in real-time. Consistent real-time simulation results have been discussed by modeling a small-scale
times with GRT are not always guaranteed but on the other distribution feeder on an off-the-shelf PC using The
hand it has potential for a better time-step resolution than xPC MathWorks, Inc. and NI’s real-time kernels. For the use of
(as low-as 50µs was achievable with GRT). xPC and ETS are GRT, it was known beforehand that real-time simulations
able to model larger power systems than the GRT but with could not be guaranteed on host computers running Windows;
larger ǻt. A compromise between model- and step-size was nevertheless optimizations simplified the schematic a point
where the described hardware returned real-time results. On

1994
the other hand, real-time simulations with xPC and ETS were
achieved without simplifications running on an external stand-
alone machine where it was devoted full processing power.
As of this work, it has been shown that a conventional PC
alone still lacks the power to model larger power systems in
real-time due to the small step size requirement and large
schematic size. It is true that PCs can handle real-time
simulations of a power system as shown in this work, but it is
recommended that they still be smaller plants of about the
shown network, sections of bigger plants, and limited to the
use of equivalent networks where possible. Also the use of
stand-alone or dedicated hardware is recommended when
available For larger and more complex power system
models, costly real-time simulators or PC clusters [10] must
still be used. Nevertheless, in all cases, the steady-state result
was the same. Generally speaking, the results are in good
agreement and the feasibility of using PCs for real-time
simulations of smaller-size power systems was confirmed as
shown in this study.
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1995