Low-cost, high-resolution, fault-robust position and speed estimation for PMSM drives operating in safety-critical systems

In this paper it is shown how to obtain a low-cost, high-resolution and fault-robust position sensing system for permanent magnet synchronous motor drives operating in safety-critical systems, by combining high-frequency signal injection with binary Hall-effect sensors. It is shown that the position error signal obtained via high-frequency signal injection can be merged easily into the quantization-harmonic-decoupling vector tracking observer used to process the Hall-effect sensor signals. The resulting algorithm provides accurate, high-resolution estimates of speed and position throughout the entire speed range; compared to state-of-the-art drives using Hall-effect sensors alone, the low speed performance is greatly improved in healthy conditions and also following position sensor faults. It is envisaged that such a sensing system can be successfully used in applications requiring IEC 61508 SIL 3 or ISO 26262 ASIL D compliance, due to its extremely high mean time to failure and to the very fast recovery of the drive following Hall-effect sensor faults at low speeds. Extensive simulation and experimental results are provided on a 3.7 kW permanent magnet drive

On extended Kalman filters with augmented state vectors for the stator flux estimation in SPMSMs

The demand for highly dynamic electrical drives, characterized by high quality torque control, in a wide variety of applications has grown tremendously during the past decades. Direct torque control (DTC) for permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM) can provide this accurate and fast torque control. When applying DTC the change of the stator flux linkage vector is controlled, based on torque and flux errors. As such the estimation of the stator flux linkage is essential. In the literature several possible solutions for the estimation of the stator flux linkage are proposed. In order to overcome problems associated with the integration of the back-emf, the use of state observers has been advocated in the literature. Several types of state observers have been conceived and implemented for PMSMs, especially the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) has received much attention. In most reported applications however the EKF is only used to estimate the speed and rotor position of the PMSM in order to realize field oriented current control in a rotor reference frame. Far fewer publications mention the use of an EKF to estimate the stator flux linkage vector in order to apply DTC. Still the performance of the EKF in the estimation of the stator flux linkage vector has not yet been thoroughly investigated. In this paper the performance of the EKF for stator flux linkage is studied and simulated. The possibilities to improve the estimation by augmenting the state vector and the consequences of these alterations are explored. Important practical aspects for FPGA implementation are discussed

FPGA-based implementation of the back-EMF symmetric-threshold-tracking sensorless commutation method for brushless DC-machines

The operation of brushless DC permanent-magnet machines requires information of the rotor position to steer the semiconductor switches of the power-supply module which is commonly referred to as Brushless Commutation. Different sensorless techniques have been proposed to estimate the rotor position using current and voltage measurements of the machine. Detection of the back-electromotive force (EMF) zero-crossing moments is one of the methods most used to achieve sensorless control by predicting the commutation moments. Most of the techniques based on this phenomenon have the inherit disadvantage of an indirect detection of commutation moments. This is the result of the commutation moment occurring 30 electrical degrees after the zero-crossing of the induced back-emf in the unexcited phase. Often, the time difference between the zero crossing of the back-emf and the optimal current commutation is assumed constant. This assumption can be valid for steady-state operation, however a varying time difference should be taken into account during transient operation of the BLDC machine. This uncertainty degrades the performance of the drive during transients. To overcome this problem which improves the performance while keeping the simplicity of the back-emf zero-crossing detection method an enhancement is proposed. The proposed sensorless method operates parameterless in a way it uses none of the brushless dc-machine parameters. In this paper different aspects of experimental implementation of the new method as well as various aspects of the FPGA programming are discussed. Proposed control method is implemented within a Xilinx Spartan 3E XC3S500E board

Sensorless And Independent Speed Control Of Dual-PMSM Drives Using Five-Leg Inverter (FLI)

This research aims to develop and implement a combined sensorless and independent speed control for dual-PMSM (Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor) drives fed by a single Five-Leg Inverter (FLI). Dual-motor drives are widely used in high traction power industry such as propulsion system, aircraft, locomotive, Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) and others. In general, dual-motor drives are designed to reduce size and cost with respect to single motor drives. However, dual-motor drives using a single three-leg inverter has its limitation in the case of operation at different operating conditions and independent speed control requirement. Recent research has shown that, dual motor drives can be independently controlled by using Five-Leg inverter (FLI). By employing this FLI topology, the dual-motor drives can be used for four-quadrant control, variable speed operation and load disturbance rejection. In other words, it can be operated for different applications. In the case of conventional dual-PMSM drives, the drives system still requires current sensors and voltage transducers for speed and rotor position estimation. In PMSM drives, the information of the feedback speed and rotor angular position is compulsory. Therefore, this research is trying to implement a combined sensorless and independent speed control for dual PMSM drives system and at the same time eliminating the usage of voltage transducers. This thesis investigates the behavior of sensorless and independent speed control for Dual-Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) drives. Initially, a single PMSM drives is designed and simulated, followed by the development of Dual-PMSM drives model. The speed and current controllers are implemented in d-q rotor reference frame using Simulink/MATLAB and the switching signals are generated by the built-in function and dSPACE. Then, the sensorless drive system is developed based on adaptive speed and position estimator. The overall performance of the drives is investigated and evaluated in terms of speed responses overshoot under variation of speed reference and speed drop under load torque disturbances. The simulation results have proved that the performance characteristics of sensorless dual-PMSM are almost similar with system using sensor except during the start-up condition. The motor performance is degraded in terms of speed overshoot for small and medium speed reference or when the motor operates far from the designed operating condition (rated value). The proposed independent dual-PMSM drives fed by FLI have better load rejection capability compared with conventional dual-PMSM drives fed by single three-phase inverter. The experimental results of the drives under investigation have shown acceptable correlation between the theoretical and simulation

Unaprijeđena metoda estimacije položaja zasnovana na upotrebi dvodimenzionalnog polja za ažuriranje parametara

The paper presents results of studies on the position estimation for the permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drive using gain scheduling technique for tuning the observer\u27s parameters. It allows a good estimation accuracy in wide range of working point change. Such observer with multi integral correction function improves the performance, but need to modify its parameters according to its speed and load. Novelty is the use of a two-dimensional gain scheduling technique and the use in the sensorless drive, where traditional solution is simple one-input scheduling variable - mainly on drives with position sensors. The look-up table output is processed using bilinear interpolation. Position observer is based on back EMF estimation. It uses predefined reference matrices of parameters, which are interpolated and depend on drive\u27s operating point.U radu su predstavljeni rezultati studija vezanih za estimaciju položaja sinkronog motora s permanentnim magnetima (PMSM) uz korištenje regulatora s podesivim pojačanjem za adaptaciju parametara estimatora. Metoda pokazuje dobru točnost estimacije u širokom rasponu radnog područja. Ovakav estimator s više integracijskih korekcijskih funkcija poboljšava performanse, ali i zahtijeva adaptaciju parametara ovisno o brzini i teretu. Novost predstavlja korištenje dvodimenzionalnog podešavanja pojačanja regulatora te primjena u bezsenzorskom upravljanju elektromotornim pogonom, gdje se tradicionalno koristi jednostavno ažuriranje jedne varijable - prije svega kod elektromotornih pogona sa senzorom za poziciju. Pregledna tablica izlaza koristi se uz bilinearnu interpolaciju. Estimator položaja zasnovan je na estimaciji protuelektromotorne sile. Estimator koristi unaprijed određene referentne matrice parametara koje se interpoliraju te ovise o radnoj točki

On the stator flux linkage estimation of an PMSM with extended Kalman filters

The demand for drives with high quality torque control has grown tremendously in a wide variety of applications. Direct torque control (DTC) for permanent magnet synchronous motors can provide this accurate and fast torque control. When applying DTC the change of the stator flux linkage vector is controlled. As such the estimation of the stator flux linkage is essential. In this paper the performance of the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) for stator flux linkage estimation is studied. Starting from a formulation of the EKF for isotropic motors, the influence of rotor anisotropy and saturation is evaluated. Subsequently it is expanded to highly isotropic motors as well. In both cases the possibilities to add parameter estimations are evaluated

Some Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) Sensorless Control Methods based on Operation Speed Area

This paper compares some sensorless Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) controls for driving an electric vehicle in terms of operating speed. Sensorless control is a type of control method in which sensors, such as speed and position sensors, are not used to measure controlled variables.  The controlled variable value is estimated from the stator current measurement. Sensorless control performance is not as good as a sensor-based system. This paper aims are to recommend a control method for the PMSM sensorless controls that would be used to drive an electric vehicle. The methods that we will discuss are divided into four categories based on the operation speed area.  They are a startup, low speed, high speed, and low and high-speed areas. The low and high-speed area will be divided into with and without switching.  If PMSM more work at high speed, the most speed area that is used, we prefer to choose the method that works at high speed, that is, the modification or combination of two or more conventional methods

Comparative Study of Sensorless Control Methods of PMSM Drives

Recently, permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) are increasingly used in high performance variable speed drives of many industrial applications. This is because the PMSM has many features, like high efficiency, compactness, high torque to inertia ratio, rapid dynamic response, simple modeling and control, and maintenance-free operation. In most applications, the presence of such a position sensor presents several disadvantages, such as reduced reliability, susceptibility to noise, additional cost and weight and increased complexity of the drive system. For these reasons, the development of alternative indirect methods for speed and position control becomes an important research topic. Many advantages of sensorless control such as reduced hardware complexity, low cost, reduced size, cable elimination, increased noise immunity, increased reliability and decreased maintenance. The key problem in sensorless vector control of ac drives is the accurate dynamic estimation of the stator flux vector over a wide speed range using only terminal variables (currents and voltages). The difficulty comprises state estimation at very low speeds where the fundamental excitation is low and the observer performance tends to be poor. The reasons are the observer sensitivity to model parameter variations, unmodeled nonlinearities and disturbances, limited accuracy of acquisition signals, drifts, and dc offsets. Poor speed estimation at low speed is attributed to data acquisition errors, voltage distortion due the PWM inverter and stator resistance drop which degrading the performance of sensorless drive. Moreover, the noises of system and measurements are considered other main problems. This paper presents a comprehensive study of the different methods of speed and position estimations for sensorless PMSM drives. A deep insight of the advantages and disadvantages of each method is investigated. Furthermore, the difficulties faced sensorless PMSM drives at low speeds as well as the reasons are highly demonstrated. Keywords: permanent magnet, synchronous motor, sensorless control, speed estimation, position estimation, parameter adaptation