By supporting real-time data exchange with external hardware and software via multiple protocols, including standard Ethernet packets, the RTSim Simulator allows for comprehensive, closed loop testing of digital substations and non-wires alternatives.

The simulator uses general purpose server or workstation grade computing systems and can support the following ethernet ports

10GBase-T LAN ports - 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) interfaces that use Twisted Pair (Base-T) cables for data transmission.
High Speed SFP+ ports optical fibre up to 10 Gbps speed.

The number of ports can be configured depending on the requirements. Default it comes with minimum 2 ethernet ports of any type.

Power Hardware/Controller Hardware in the Loop Testing

Supported Communication Protocols

TCP/UDP Sockets

The firmware solution for network-based simulation interfacing, supporting both TCP and UDP protocols over LAN.

Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) Up to 9,000 bytes (jumbo frames) supported per packet.
Payload Capacity The NIC can handle TCP/UDP packets with a maximum data payload of ~8,900 bytes (after header overhead), with payload data formatted as raw binary, integers, or IEEE 754 floating-point values.
Segmentation Offload The firmware allows applications to transmit large buffers (up to 64 KB per send/ call) which are automatically segmented by the NIC into MTU-sized frames.
Socket Handling Capacity The networking stack on this platform can sustain hundreds of thousands of concurrent TCP/UDP sockets. Throughput Capacity: Each port supports up to 10 Gb/s line rate across the onboard interfaces.
Throughput Capacity Each port supports up to 10 Gb/s line rate across the onboard interfaces.
Queue Management Each Ethernet port supports up to 128 transmit/receive queue pairs, allowing efficient parallel socket processing across multiple CPU cores.
Device Multiplexing For applications requiring communication with multiple external devices, the firmware and OS can manage tens of thousands of simultaneous flows, or practically 30–50 independent application channels per core at line rate, depending on the workload.
Virtualization Support The NIC firmware supports SR-IOV with up to 64 virtual functions per port, enabling hardware-isolated socket channels in multi-VM or container environments.

Modbus

The system enables Modbus communication over TCP/IP networks using the Ethernet interfaces. With the integration of a Modbus software, the platform supports Modbus TCP, Modbus RTU over TCP, Modbus ASCII over TCP, and Modbus UDP

IEC 61850

Supports IEC 61850 MMS (TCP/IP), GOOSE (Ethernet multicast), and Sampled Values (SV)
Operates as Client/Server (MMS), Publisher/Subscriber (GOOSE), and MU/IED (SV) on any of the interfaces.
Up to 60 IEDs total (any mix of MMS/GOOSE/SV) across all ports.
Timing & Synchronization: Supports IEEE 1588 PTP time alignment via OS/PTP stack; SV publisher jitter < 250 µs @ 80 samp/cycle.