RapidPro Application-Specific Configurations

This application note describes how the predefined RapidPro configurations can be used during the Rapid Control Prototyping development phase. RapidPro’s predefined configurations cover a wide range of typical signal conditioning and power stage tasks in various application areas.

For example, the configurations for engine control prototyping let you run engines with up to 6 cylinders and all modern sensors and actuators, and the configuration for electric motor control serves as a flexible inverter stage during the prototyping phase of diverse AC electric motors. Each configuration consists of selected RapidPro power and signal conditioning modules installed in the corresponding number of RapidPro units.

A Control Unit is used whenever complex I/O signals need to be captured or generated, or a large number of I/O signals are involved.

With this application note, dSPACE also provides dedicated Simulink® I/O startup models for the configurations which include all available I/O signals and suitable ConfigurationDesk experiments.

To verify correct system behaviour, dedicated RapidPro system configurations were built up and tested with a counterpart Hardware-In-The-Loop System. This also included generation and testing of new routing files (see corresponding Routing ID) which represent the specific setup of RapidPro units and modules.

The example configurations were created and tested using MATLAB R2007b+ (Simulink 7.0.1) and dSPACE Release 6.6.