Tightly coupled Hardware-Software development using QSPICE.

Overview

Many power electronic systems (eg grid connected PV or battery inverters etc) are a complex integration of electronic sensing circuits and power electronic switching circuits all controlled by software within an embedded microcontroller.  Accurate simulation of the interaction of software and hardware is difficult and often requires development and debugging on hardware prototypes.  

QSPICE is a realtively new freely available spice program which allows device level circuit simulation AND the integration of C/C++ and/or VHDL code as simulation circuit blocks.  QSPICE would allow the integration of software alongside hardware simulation much earlier in the design process, and also allow software or hardware modifications to be initially tested without risk in the safety of a simulation environment.  Some limited examples have been developed by other QSPICE users, and some previous work done by past UG thesis students.

This project seeks to develop an example QSPICE simulation of a power electronic system with an embedded controller running some simple C code.  This along with documentation would serve as a template for more complex system development, or for use by future UG thesis students.

This topic is  primarily an electrical engineering topic.

Research engagement

topic definition and scoping (reverse brief to demonstrate understanding - topic is defined), literature review and prior art searching and summarising, code development, circuit simulation, experimental verification, and report writing.

Research activities

You will be working with electrical engineering academics, PhD and final year UG BE capstone students.

Research skills

You will gain skills in topic definition and scoping, literature and prior art review, code development, circuit simulation, experimental verification, and report writing.

Outcomes

The goal of this project would be to develop
- QSPICE and C function libraries,
- simple example cases and
- documentation
to demonstrate the use of QSPICE in power electronic projects using common microcontrollers in use by the QUT EER UG cohort.

A final report should also be written.

Skills and experience

You should have embedded C coding skills, and electronics skills, specifically the use of any spice circuit simulator.  Power electronics skills are an advantage.

Start date

2 November, 2026

End date

19 February, 2027

Location

QUT Gardens Point.  Some work can be conducted remotely.

Keywords

• Circuit simulation
• SPICE
• QSPICE
• C-code
• Embedded power electronics

Contact

Geoffrey Walker

0403435386

geoffrey.walker@qut.edu.au