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Hybrid I-f Starting and Observer-Based Sensorless Control of Single-Phase BLDC-PM Motor Drives
Liviu Ioan Iepure, Member, IEEE, Ion Boldea, Fellow, IEEE, and Frede Blaabjerg, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractA motion sensorless control for single-phase permanent magnet brushless dc motor based on an I-f starting sequence and a real-time permanent magnet ux estimation is proposed here. The special calculation for extracting the position and speed used here implies the generating of an orthogonal ux system, the atan2 trigonometric function, and a phase-locked loop observer. The inuence of the permanent magnet ux harmonic content is presented by analytical expressions and digital simulations. The proposed sensorless control is validated by complete experimental results on a commercial small high-speed blower-motor (40 W, 10 krpm, 12 Vdc). Index TermsOrthogonal ux system, permanent magnet brushless dc (PM-BLDC), phase-locked loop (PLL) observer, sensorless control.

I. I NTRODUCTION N THE FIELD of small-power (up to 1-Nm torque), small starting torque applications (blowers, pumps), the singlephase BLDC motor presents a growing interest particularly in the residential and automotive industry, where it is more efcient than rival motors and results in motor size reduction [1][4]. The main peculiarity of single-phase BLDC motor is the fact that solutions to eliminate the dead points in torque waveform are required. Methods to study and eliminate this drawback by electromagnetic analysis, modeling, and then by a proper design and/or by an adequate control have been addressed extensively [5][9]. Typically, one Hall sensor is used to control the current commutation to maximize the torque output by keeping the back EMF and the current in phase. For high speed, the advance commutation angle techniques as assessed in [10], [11] have to be used. Also, in [12][14], adaptive commutation angle methods for efciency and torque improvement, requiring some extra hardware, are proposed. Under open-loop pulse width modulation (PWM) control, a current spike during each commutation appears. This results in acoustic noise, increased electronic cost, torque pulsations, and low efciency. One solution is to use the aforementioned
Manuscript received March 25, 2011; revised June 13, 2011; accepted August 12, 2011. Date of publication October 14, 2011; date of current version April 13, 2012. L. I. Iepure is with the AVL Trimerics GmbH, 70794 Filderstadt, Germany (e-mail: liviu.iepure@avl-trimerics.com). I. Boldea is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University Politehnica of Timisoara, 300223 Timisoara, Romania (e-mail: boldea@lselinux. upt.ro). F. Blaabjerg is with the Institute of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark (e-mail: fbl@iet.aau.dk). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TIE.2011.2172176

phase advance technique, while [15] proposes a tail end current control. Also, in [16], current shape control for improving the efciency and to avoid the oversizing of power electronics devices was investigated. In [17], [18], another current shape solution, for smoothing the torque, was determined based on a prior nite-element method (FEM) analysis. In [19], using the Lagrange multiplier, an optimal current waveform for low copper losses and low torque ripple was introduced. For this purpose, high-resolution position information and a microcontroller are needed. While several publications on single-phase permanent magnet brushless dc (PM-BLDC) motor control have appeared, few so far considered the elimination of position sensor. One solution for sensorless control of single-phase BLDC motor drives is based on back EMF sensing via the winding timesharing method, as described in [20]. In this paper, a second solution, based on real-time ux estimation, is adopted. Though apparently very simple sensorless control techniques should be used in single-phase BLDC motors, good performance in terms of speed regulation, torque pulsations, and losses require more involved control solutions, such as those that follow, which still may be implemented on reasonable cost DSP systems. In view of the above, the present papers main contributions aim to: introduce a voltage-model proportional integrator controller (PI) compensated observer-based sensorless control for single-phase PM-BLDC motor drives; develop a special calculation method for estimating the rotor position from the permanent magnet (PM) ux observer by generating an orthogonal ux system and by using the atan2 special trigonometric function; analyze the peculiarity of using a ux waveform with harmonic content in the proposed position observer; improve the estimated position, by using a phase-locked loop (PLL) observer, which can give also the estimated speed, and so the noise produced by position differentiation is eliminated; validate the proposed sensorless control under both motoring and regenerative braking operation modes; combine the ux voltage-model observer-based proposed sensorless control with an open-loop current-frequency (I-f) starting strategy with a simple transition to closedloop sensorless control. The paper is structured as follows: Introduction (Section I), Proposed state observer (Section II), I-f starting and proposed sensorless control diagram (Section III), Experimental results (Section IV), and Conclusions (Section V).

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Fig. 1.

Structure of the proposed state observer.

II. T HE P ROPOSED S TATE O BSERVER A rotor position and speed observer, based on a generated orthogonal ux system, is proposed and explored further. Fig. 1 shows the proposed estimation diagram. The state observer is composed of a PM ux estimator, an orthogonal ux system generator, and a PLL observer. A. PM Flux Estimator The implemented PM ux estimator is using as inputs the applied voltage and the winding current. Instead of using the measured phase voltage, the PI current controller output is used as a voltage estimator. This will reduce the cost and will improve the drive robustness to noise and so a LPF which can delay the signal is not needed as in the case of measured voltage. In this case, the power switch voltage drops and the dead time have to be considered, particularly at low-speed operation. Starting from machine voltage (1), the PM ux linkage is determined by voltage integration, using (2) V =R i + L
t

Fig. 2. PM ux estimator inputs and output. (a) Applied voltage. (b) Phase current. (c) Estimated total ux and PM ux, at 5000 rpm, by digital simulations.

dP M di + e; e = = ke () (1) dt dt

rithm to analytically illustrate the peculiarity of using nonsinusoidal ux distribution in the proposed position and speed estimation. Equation (4) shows the obtained analytical approximation P M =
k=1,3,5

s =
0

(V Ri Vcomp )dt; Vcomp = (kp + ki /s) s (2)

Ak cos(k ) + B1 sin

(4)

PM = s Li;

where V is the input voltage, i is the current, R is the resistance, e is the back EMF, is the rotor speed, L is the winding inductance, and s , PM are the total ux and the permanent magnet ux, respectively. In practice, the implementation of an integrator for motor ux estimation is problematic because of the ramp drift and the dc offset produced on the output signal. A PI correction feedback (Vcomp ) was used here, together with an ideal integrator. Considering that complementary PWM signals were used for controlling the power switches, thus allowing controlled regenerative braking also, the reconstructed voltage is obtained from V = (2 D 1) Vdc (3)

where P M is the instantaneous estimated PM ux, and the terms Ak , B1 are the coefcients of the Fourier series, listed in Appendix, Table I. B. The Proposed Orthogonal PM Flux System Generator In single-phase BLDC-PM motors, there is less information than in three phase motors, and thus, some special calculations have to be done to estimate the rotor position. The idea of this sensorless drive is to create an orthogonal PM ux linkage system to employ it in rotor position/speed estimation. In the literature, the solution of generating two orthogonal signals is applied in the eld of single-phase grid connected systems, where the delayed signal is the measured voltage [21][23], but no such a solution for one-phase BLDC motor sensorless drive is encountered. Considering an ideal sinusoidal ux distribution as in (5), a ux phasor as in (6) can be assigned, where the estimated PM ux is Re{} () = cos = ej = cos + j sin . (5) (6)

where D is the reference duty cycle, and Vdc is the dc link voltage. Fig. 2 shows as an example the estimated total ux and PM ux, obtained by simulation from the shown input voltage signal and phase current, at 5000-rpm speed. The estimated ux was approximated by Fourier series as function of electrical position through a curve tting algo-

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Fig. 3. shape.

Locus of PM ux phasor. (a) Ideal sinusoidal shape. (b) Real ux

Where () is the instantaneous value of PM ux in stator frame coordinates, and is the PM ux amplitude. From (6), the phasor phase angle, and so the PM position, can be determined by using (7), which, under steady-state conditions, equals t = arctan Im{} Re{} . (7)
Fig. 4. (a) Orthogonal uxes and (b) estimated position at 5000 rpm by digital simulations.

Now, in the case of the real PM ux of a BLDC motor, due to the harmonic content in its shape, the PM ux phasor amplitude is not constant with its position, and it is not always equal with the PM ux amplitude as Fig. 3 shows. Due to this aspect, a Fourier series analytical approach is employed here to outline the peculiarity of using a PM ux with harmonic content, when extracting the position by the above presented method. Hence, starting from (5)(7), the nonsinusoidal PM ux shape is implied further in estimating the rotor. By using an identical ux shape delayed with /2, the imaginary component of the PM ux phasor is obtained. Having the PM ux approximation from (4), the delayed PM ux analytical approximation is expressed by + B1 sin . Ak cos k P M d = 2 2
k=1,3,5

Fig. 5.

Simulink implementation of position estimator.

a sinusoidal one, with the C0 , C1 , C2 tending to zero as the PM ux waveform is approaching to a sinusoidal shape atan = dt + C0 + C1 cos(4t) + C2 sin(4t). (11) In this paper, the adopted solution for real-time generation of the imaginary PM ux component is based on delaying the estimated PM ux with a number of sampling periods, equivalent to 90 electrical degrees. The number of sampling periods used for the delay is obtained from the estimated speed using N= 2 4 p Ts (12)

(8) Fig. 3 shows the ux locus of the ideal sinusoidal ux, respectively, of the real PM ux determined using (4) and (8). Thus, having two orthogonal uxes as the real and imaginary components of a ux phasor given in (9), the rotor position can be extracted using the special function atan2 as in (10) P M = P M + j P M d atan = arctan Im{P M } Re{P M } = atan2 P M d P M . (9) (10)

To avoid the complex mathematics for an analytical expression of rotor position, (10) was numerically computed using the uxes from (4) and (8), and the result was also expressed using the Fourier series. Equation (11) represents the Fourier series-based approximation of the calculated position. Some fourth-order harmonics are noticed additionally to the linear dependency with speed. The C0 , C1 , and C2 are the coefcients of the Fourier series, listed in Appendix, Table I. Equation (11) is valid for a ux waveform varying from a triangular shape to

where is the estimated speed in [rad/s], p is the number of pole pairs, and Ts is the sampling time Fig. 4 shows the estimated and the delayed PM uxes, respectively, and the estimated position obtained by simulation at a speed of 5000 rpm, while Fig. 5 illustrates the Simulink implemented block diagram of the position estimator. The above determined harmonics from (11) are visible as small oscillations in the estimated position. They may cause further problems in prescribing a proper current shape, and some measures must be taken.

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Fig. 6.

Equivalent PLL-based position and speed estimator.

Fig. 8. Proposed sensorless control block diagram.

III. I-f S TARTING AND P ROPOSED S ENSORLESS C ONTROL D IAGRAM Fig. 8 shows the proposed sensorless control diagram. Basically, the control contains two PI controllers, a state observer, and an I-f starting sequence. During the I-f starting sequence, the applied reference current frequency is ramped by using a rst-order delay lter, while the reference current amplitude is maintained constant. From this frequency, an imposed position is obtained, and the prescribed phase current is commutated by using this feedforward signal. When running on this starting sequence, the speed controller is kept with zero input error by agi/f to avoid error accumulation in the integral component (which would cause problems when crossing to the closed-loop sensorless control). When the I-f frequency exceeds a certain threshold value, the agi/f signal will make the transition to the state observer-based sensorless control. A closed-speed loop containing the inner current loop is used further for state-observer-based sensorless control. The output from the PI speed controller represents the reference current for the current controller. The current control loop also employs a PI controller, which has the purpose to minimize the current error. The current control is made through the measurement of the phase current which is forced to follow a waveform template. The current shape is now prescribed using the estimated position, obtained as described in the previous sections. IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS The proposed motion sensorless control was validated by experiments. The experimental motor is an outer rotor fourpole single-phase tapered airgap PM-BLDC motor with the electrical specication given in Appendix, Table II. The implementation of the digital sensorless control was carried out with the rapid prototyping and real-time interface system dSpace 1103 (Fig. 9). It goes without saying that an industrial implementation should be done on a low-cost DSP, and in our experience, a dsPIC30F2010 (Microchip) should satisfy the computation requirements. However, this is beyond our scope here. A full-bridge single-phase PWM converter is used. It

Fig. 7. Simulation results at 3000 rpm. (a) Estimated position. (b) Position error with equivalent PLL system.

C. PLL-Based Position Rening and Speed Observer In general, the calculation of speed from the estimated rotor position by differentiation is problematic because it results in signicant noise. Here, a PLL is used to estimate the speed and to lter the estimated position. So far, PLL observers have been widely used in high performance servo drives for speed calculation from resolver or encoder signals or for position and speed estimation in sensorless control of three-phase motors [24][26]. Regarding the singlephase PLL observer, various structures were usually used for single-phase grid-connected applications [27], [28], but no applications for single-phase PM-BLDC motor sensorless drives are known to us so far. Fig. 6 presents the PLL structure which improves the atan2based estimated position (atan ). The error between the previous atan2 position and the estimated position is the input to a PI controller, while the output from the PI controller is the estimated speed. The essential relations are given by P LL ); a tan P LL = = sin( P LL = P LL /s. Kp + Ki s ; (13)

Fig. 7 shows by simulation results how the PLL output position tracks the input position and behaves like a very efcient LPF for the noticed position oscillations.

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Fig. 9. Experimental rig.

Fig. 11. Experimental results for speed transient. (a) Measured speed. (b) Estimated speed. (c) Current. (d) Estimated ux. (e) Current and Hall signals under speed transient. (f) Current and Hall signals at constant speed.

behavior of the PLL observer can be also noticed if we analyze the position error. The offset value noticed in position error from Fig. 10 is compensated when running on speed closed-loop sensorless control, and moreover, a speed-dependent phase advance commutation angle was applied at higher speeds, to obtain an always positive torque. B. Dynamics
Fig. 10. Experimental results at 3000 rpm. (a) Estimated and delayed ux. (b) Measured and PLL-based estimated position. (c) Position error. (d) Speed.

should be mentioned that the motor was provided with its blower, and thus it was under its natural load all the time.

A. Steady-State Tests Fig. 10 shows the experimental results at a given constant speed of 3000 rpm. The measured and estimated positions are intentionally shifted with 1 radian to avoid overlaps. A good agreement between measured (calculated from Hall signal) and estimated position can be observed, and the ltering

Having a commercial blower-1 phase BLDC motor block unit, the measured position was obtained only from the Hall signal. Consequently, the position feedback may perhaps not be very precise. The relation between the Hall sensor output and the current is used also to validate the sensorless control effectiveness. Fig. 11 shows a transient behavior for speed steps of 1000 rpm. Comparing Fig. 11(e) and (f), a small delay between the current and the Hall signal is noticed under transients. Since the current is prescribed using this estimated position, it means that the error between the estimated and the real position is increasing under speed transients but not alarming (a maximum value of 20 electric degrees was calculated). This delay can be

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Fig. 13. Representative signals during braking. (a) Estimated and measured position. (b) Estimated voltage versus BEMF. (c) Phase current.

Fig. 12. Experimental results for 5000 to 3000 rpm speed transient. (a) Measured speed. (b) Estimated speed. (c) Estimated ux. (d) Current.

reduced more by a better PLL observer tuning, or it can also be compensated by a distinctive phase commutation advance angle under acceleration. C. Regenerative Braking For rapid and controlled braking, the regenerative braking is applied here. Fig. 12 shows a regenerative braking from 5000 to 3000 rpm. A drop in the estimated ux amplitude during braking process is noticed. This ux decrease can be explained by the fact that during the braking time interval, the dc link voltage increases, and since no voltage measurement is done, the estimated ux is affected by this phenomenon. A property of the proposed sensorless control reveals: in spite of this phenomenon, the sensorless speed control remains effective because the position from the PLL observer is not affected by PM ux amplitude. The estimated position which remains close to the measured one and the current waveform which has opposite sign compared with the BEMF (Fig. 13) conrms the control effectiveness during regenerative braking. D. I-f Starting Tests Fig. 14 presents a detailed view over the crossing moment from the I-f sequence to closed-loop sensorless control. As explained above, the PI speed controller sees zero speed error at the input, and so the imposed reference current from it

will be zero during I-f sequence. During this sequence, a constant current is commutated based on a feedforward position information. When the reference frequency from I-f control is greater than the imposed threshold, the sensorless control passes to the closed-loop sensorless control, and the current commutation is then done based on the estimated position [Fig. 14(c)], while the I-f position and speed become zero. After the transition to closed-loop sensorless control, the speed controller produces a nonzero signal output as reference current [Fig. 14(e)]. In Fig. 14(b), good speed estimation is obtained, with some oscillations at the start around the prescribed I-f speed. Fig. 14(c) shows that for both the estimated and I-f positions, the initial position is considered to be the parking position. As shown in [29], by applying a proper positive pulse before I-f sequence, the starting position will always be appropriate for starting with positive current as used here [Fig. 14(d)]. To further validate this proposed sensorless control, a short analysis of developed torque is done. Based on a previous FEM analysis and laboratory measurements [30], the BEMF and the cogging torque characteristic of the motor are used as lookup tables. The input to these look-up tables is the calculated position from the Hall signal. Using this information, the torque was calculated using (13) under steady state (d/dt = 0) J d = ke i + Tcogg Tload . dt (14)

Fig. 15 shows the experimental results for a constant speed of 4000 rpm. At this speed, no commutation phase advance angle was used. It can be noticed that the current is almost in phase with the BEMF (only a small delay time of approximately 23 sampling times, needed for the current to rise, is noticed),

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Fig. 15. Experimental results at 4000 rpm. (a) Position. (b) BEMF and current. (c) Calculated torque.

Fig. 14. Experimental results for starting. (a) Estimated speed. (b) Speed comparison. (c) Position. (d) Current. (e) Output from speed controller. (f) Hall signal.

and so, the obtained instantaneous torque is always positive. Fig. 15 shows the possibility of evaluating torque waveform without using any online measurement and shows fairly small torque pulsations for a single-phase PMBLDC, due to the fact that the current is correctly prescribed using the estimated position. Due to the errors that can appear when calculating the position from the Hall sensor in dynamics, only the torque estimated under steady-state speed is reliable and presented. V. C ONCLUSION A hybrid I-f starting and observer-based motion sensorless control, which can handle both motoring and regenerative braking operation modes for a single-phase PM BLDC motor,

was introduced here. No regenerative braking under sensorless control for a single-phase PM-BLDC motor is known to us so far. The proposed sensorless control is based on the estimation of a continuous position starting from a real-time reference voltage-model PM ux estimator. In authors knowledge, no sensorless control for single-phase PM-BLDC motor drive which does not use any voltage measurement and allows for advanced control solutions (i.e., current shaping based on high resolution position information) was referred in the literature so far. Starting from the estimated PM ux, some special calculations are done to extract the position/speed information. These imply a generated orthogonal PM ux system and the atan2 function for a rst step position calculation. Then, a PLL observer is used for speed estimation and position ltering. Such a sensorless control solution for a single-phase PM-BLDC motor drive is considered new. The peculiarity of using a PM ux with harmonic content for extracting the position in this way is explained and detailed by Fourier series analytical approximation and by simulations. In spite of the harmonic content in the estimated PM ux, the effectiveness of this method was proven by exhaustive experimental results under both motoring and regenerative braking operation modes. Also, the proposed sensorless control proved to be effective, in spite of the estimated PM ux amplitude variations (Section IV-C). Here, the estimated ux amplitude decrease is mainly caused by the experimental setup which allows the reverse current in the dc link to ow only in the dc link capacitor during regenerative braking. However, in a real application, the estimated PM ux amplitude changing can be caused by both dc voltage variation (i.e., when a battery supply is used) and phase resistance variation. This encourages the authors to say that the use of a simple reference voltage-model PM ux estimator, in

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TABLE I F OURIER S ERIES C OEFFICIENTS

TABLE II M OTOR PARAMETERS

spite of its susceptibility to parameter variations, should sufce for this solution of sensorless control. Also, the aforementioned property allowed the sensorless control implementation without being necessary to use any voltage measurement (dc link voltage or terminal phase voltage). A PPENDIX See Tables I and II. R EFERENCES
[1] E. C. Protas, Energy saving by means of a new drive conception, in Proc. Int. ACEMP, Kusadasi, Turkey, Jun. 57, 1995, pp. 303308. [2] V. Ostovic, Performance comparison of U-Core and round-stator singlephase permanent-magnet motors for pump applications, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 476482, Mar./Apr. 2002. [3] D. Ionel, High-efciency variable-speed electric motor drive technologies for energy savings in the US residential sector, in Proc. 12th Int. Conf. Optim. Electr. Electron. Equip., Brasov, Romania, May 2022, 2010, pp. 14031414. [4] S. Bentouati, Z. Q. Zhu, and D. Howe, Permanent magnet brushless DC motors for consumer products, in Proc. 9th Int. Conf. Electr. Mach. Drives, Canterbury, U.K., Sep. 13, 1999, pp. 118122. [5] S. Bentouati, Z. Q. Zhu, and D. Howe, Inuence of design parameters on the starting torque of a single-phase PM brushless dc motor, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 35333536, Sep. 2000. [6] L. Iepure, L. Tutelea, and I. Boldea, FEM analysis and control of a tapered airgap single phase PMSM, in Proc. OPTIM , May 2224, 2008, pp. 241248. [7] Y. Chen and Z. Q. Zhu, Three-dimensional lumped-parameter magnetic circuit analysis of single-phase ux-switching permanent-magnet motor, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 44, no. 6, pp. 17011710, Nov./Dec. 2008. [8] B. I. Kwon, B. Y. Yang, S. C. Park, and Y. S. Jin, Novel topology of unequal air gap in a single-phase brushless dc motor, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 37233726, Sep. 2001. [9] C. L. Chiu, Y. T. Chen, and W. S. Jhang, Properties of cogging torque, starting torque, and electrical circuits for the single-phase brushless dc motor, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 44, no. 10, pp. 23172323, Oct. 2008. [10] K. B. Jang, S. H. Won, T. H. Kim, and L. Lee, Starting and high-speed driving of single-phase ux-reversal motor for vacuum cleaner, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 41, no. 10, pp. 39673969, Oct. 2005. [11] M. Adriollo, M. De Bortoli, G. Martinelli, A. Morini, and A. Tortella, Design improvement of a single-phase brushless permanent magnet motor for small fan appliances, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 8895, Jan. 2010. [12] C. M. Chao, C. P. Liao, D. R. Huang, and T. F. Ying, A new automatic phase adjustment of optical drive signal, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 417419, Mar. 1998.

[13] D. R. Hang, C. Y. Fan, S. J. Wang, H. P. Pan, T. F. Ying, C. M. Chao, and E. G. Lean, A new type single phase spindle motor for HDD and DVD, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 839844, Mar. 1999. [14] C. L. Chiu, Y. T. Chen, Y. H. Shen, and R. H. Liang, An accurate automatic phase advance adjustment of brushless dc motor, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 120126, Jan. 2009. [15] L. Armstrong, Current Control Removes Brushless DC Motor Commutation Spikes, Zetex Semiconductors, Oldham, U.K., Aug. 2005. Application Note ZE0469. [16] W. C. Chen and Y. Y. Tzou, Efciency optimization control for singlephase brushless DC fan motors, in Proc. Power Electron. Motion Control Conf., May 2009, pp. 19131918. [17] M. Jagiela, E. A. Mendrela, and R. Wrobel, Current control for the smoothing of torque in a single-phase permanent-magnet disc motor using 3-D FEM, J. Elect. Eng., vol. 87, no. 4, pp. 191196, Jun. 2005. [18] L. Sun, Q. Feng, and J. Shang, Drive of single-phase brushless dc motors based on torque analysis, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 4650, Jan. 2007. [19] W. Amrhein, S. Silber, K. Nenninger, and G. Trauner, Mechatronical design studies on small brushless motors, Int. J. Rotating Machinery, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 127133, 2003. [20] W. Wang, Z. Wu, W. Jin, and J. Ying, Sensorless control technology for single phase BLDCM based on the winding time-sharing method, in Proc. Ind. Electron. Soc., Nov. 2005, pp. 17321736. [21] S. M. Silva, B. M. Lopes, B. J. C. Filho, R. P. Campana, and W. C. Bosventura, Performance evaluation of PLL algorithms for singlephase grid-connected systems, in Conf. Rec. Ind. Appl., Oct. 2004, vol. 4, pp. 22592263. [22] M. Ciubotariu, R. Teodorescu, and F. Blaabjerg, A new single-phase PLL structure based on a second order generalized integrator, in Proc. Power Electron. Spec. Conf., Jun. 2006, pp. 16. [23] S. Shinnaka, A robust single phase PLL system with stable and fast tracking, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 624633, Mar./Apr. 2008. [24] L. Harnefors and H. P. Nee, A general algorithm for speed and position estimation of ac motors, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 7783, Feb. 2000. [25] M. Comanescu and L. Xu, An improved ux observer based on PLL frequency estimator for sensorless vector control of induction motors, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 5056, Feb. 2006. [26] J.-K. Lee, J.-K. Seok, and D.-C. Lee, Sensorless speed control of nonsalient permanent magnet synchronous motor using rotor position tracking PI controller, in Proc. IEEE Power Electron. Spec. Conf., Aachen, Germany, 2004, pp. 40244029. [27] S. A. Oliveira da Silva, R. Novochadlo, and R. A. Modesto, Single-phase PLL structure using modied p-q theory for utility connected systems, in Conf. Rec. IEEE Power Electron. Spec. Conf., Rhodes, Greece, Jun. 2008, pp. 47064711. [28] R. M. Santos Filho, P. F. Seixas, P. C. Cortizo, L. A. B. Torres, and A. F. Souza, Comparison of three single-phase PLL algorithms for UPS applications, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 55, no. 8, pp. 29232932, Aug. 2008. [29] W. Wang, Z. Wu, W. Jin, and J. Ying, Starting methods for hall-less single phase BLDC motor, in Proc. IEEE Ind. Electron. Soc., Nov. 2005, pp. 16051609. [30] L. Iepure, D. Iles-Klumpner, M. Risticevic, and I. Boldea, Small blower PM single phase brushless d.c. motor drives: FEM characterization with experiments, in Conf. Rec. IEMDC, Miami, FL, May 2009, pp. 1428 1434, [CD-ROM].

Liviu Ioan Iepure (M11) received the Ph.D. degree from University Politehnica of Timisoara, Romania, in 2010. He was a Guest Researcher at the Institute of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Aalborg East, Denmark, in 2009, and at the EBM-PAPST St. Georgen GmbH & Co., St. Georgen, Germany, in 2008. He is currently an electric machine development engineer at AVL-Trimerics GmbH, Filderstadt, Germany. His current research interests include design, modeling, testing, and control of electric machines, sensors, and actuators.

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Ion Boldea (M77SM81F96) received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University Politehnica of Timisoara, Romania, in 1967 and 1973, respectively. He is currently a Full Professor at the University Politehnica of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania. He has visited universities in the U.S. and the U.K. repeatedly and has published extensively on linear and rotary electric machines, drives, and power electronics. His latest books (with S. A. Nasar) are Electric Drives (2nd Edition), Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2005; The Induction Machine Handbook, Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2001; and The Electric Generator Handbook (parts 1 and 2), Boca Raton: CRC Taylor & Francis, 2005. He is an Associate Editor of Electric Power Components and Systems and Director of the Internet-only Journal of Electric Engineering (www.jee.ro). Dr. Boldea is a member of the Industrial Drives and the Electric Machines Committees of the IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS) and was Chairman of the OPTIM International Conferences (IEEE-IAS sponsored) in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010.

Frede Blaabjerg (S86M88SM97F03) was born in Erslev, Denmark, on May 6, 1963. He received the M.Sc.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the Institute of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, in 1987 and 1995, respectively. He was with ABB-Scandia, Randers, Denmark, from 1987 to 1988. He became an Assistant Professor in 1992 at Aalborg University, in 1996, an Associate Professor, and in 1998, a Full Professor in power electronics and drives. Today, he is also the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Science, and Medicine. In 2000, he was a Visiting Professor with the University of Padova, Padova, Italy, as well as a part-time Program Research Leader in wind turbines at the Research Center Risoe. In 2002, he was a Visiting Professor at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia. He has been involved in many research projects within the industry. Among them is the Danfoss Professor Program in Power Electronics and Drives. He is the author or coauthor of more than 500 publications in his research elds including Control in Power Electronics (New York: Academic, 2002). He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Power Electronics and Elteknik. He has been very involved in Danish Research policy in the last ten years. His research interests are in power electronics, static power converters, ac drives, switched reluctance drives, modeling, characterization of power semiconductor devices and simulation, wind turbines, and green power inverters. Dr. Blaabjerg is a member of the Danish Academy of Technical Science, the European Power Electronics and Drives Association, and the IEEE Industry Applications Society. Finally, he has served as Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Power Electronics Society from 2005 to 2007. He is the Editor-inChief of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON P OWER E LECTRONICS. He received the 1995 Angelos Award for his contribution in modulation technique and control of electric drives, the Annual Teacher Prize from Aalborg University, in 1995, the Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award from the IEEE Power Electronics Society, in 1998, eight IEEE Prize paper awards, the C. Y. OConnor fellowship from Perth, Australia, in 2002, the Statoil-Prize for his contributions in power electronics, in 2003, and the Grundfos-prize for his contributions in power electronics and drives, in 2004.