A Novel PMSM Hybrid Sensorless Control Strategy for EV Applications Based on PLL and HFI

In this paper, a novel hybrid sensorless control strategy for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine (PMSM) drives applied to Electric Vehicles (EV) is presented. This sensorless strategy covers the EV full speed range and also has speed reversal capability. It combines a High Frequency Injection (HFI) technique for low and zero speeds, and a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) for the medium and high speed regions. A solution to achieve smooth transitions between the PLL and the HFI strategies is also proposed, allowing to correctly detect the rotor position polarity when HFI takes part. Wide speed and torque four-quadrant simulation results are provided, which validate the proposed sensorless strategy for being further implemented in EV.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

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

Observer-based tuning of two-inertia servo-drive systems with integrated SAW torque transducers

This paper proposes controller design and tuning methodologies that facilitate the rejection of periodic load-side disturbances applied to a torsional mechanical system while simultaneously compensating for the observer’s inherent phase delay. This facilitates the use of lower-bandwidth practically realizable disturbance observers. The merits of implementing full- and reduced-order observers are investigated, with the latter being implemented with a new low-cost servo-machine-integrated highband width torque-sensing device based on surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology. Specifically, the authors’ previous work based on proportional–integral–derivative (PID) and resonance ratio control (RRC) controllers (IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 1226–1237, Aug. 2006) is augmented with observer disturbance feedback. It is shown that higher-bandwidth disturbance observers are required to maximize disturbance attenuation over the low-frequency band (as well as the desired rejection frequency), thereby attenuating a wide range of possible frequencies. In such cases, therefore, it is shown that the RRC controller is the preferred solution since it can employ significantly higher observer bandwidth, when compared to PID counterparts, by virtue of reduced noise sensitivity. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the prototype servo-machine-integrated 20-N · mSAWtorque transducer is not unduly affected by machine-generated electromagnetic noise and exhibits similar dynamic behavior as a conventional instrument inline torque transducer

Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors are Globally Asymptotically Stabilizable with PI Current Control

This note shows that the industry standard desired equilibrium for permanent magnet synchronous motors (i.e., maximum torque per Ampere) can be globally asymptotically stabilized with a PI control around the current errors, provided some viscous friction (possibly small) is present in the rotor dynamics and the proportional gain of the PI is suitably chosen. Instrumental to establish this surprising result is the proof that the map from voltages to currents of the incremental model of the motor satisfies some passivity properties. The analysis relies on basic Lyapunov theory making the result available to a wide audience

Hybrid sensorless control of PMSM in full speed range using HFI and back-EMF

The permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM) are more and more used because of their high performance compared with other AC motors. The present paper proposes a hybrid controller which consists of a high frequency injection estimator and a back-electromotive-force observer in full speed range for the sensorless control of PMSM. The aim objective of the study to prevent speed overshot in startup time of the motor and provides a better dynamic response in transient and permanent states using this structure. A hybrid algorithm is applied to realize a smooth transition from low to high speed. At standstill and very low speed region, HF injection technique is used to detect the rotor initial position. In this first step study, the position estimation is derived from a HF current injection by using only one filter. When the rotor speed goes up to a certain value where back-EMF can provide adequate information, a back-EMF observer will dominate. Thanks to this structure, the mechanical sensor can be engaged using the best estimates and the developed control method is fast, simple, and flexible. The effectiveness, superiority, and performance of the proposed control method and extensive simulation results are provided on a 1 kW permanent magnet synchronous motor drive, demonstrating the expected performances

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

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