030 1

Vector Control of an Induction Motor Fed by a

PWM Inverter with Output LC Filter
Janne Salomäki and Jorma Luomi

Abstract — This paper introduces a control method for an in- II. THEORY
duction motor that is supplied by a PWM voltage source inverter
The principle of the control system is shown in Fig. 1. The
through an LC filter. A full-order observer is used to estimate the
system states, and no additional voltage or current measurements inverter output voltage u A is filtered by an LC filter, and the
are needed for the vector control of the motor. Simulation and induction motor (IM) is fed by the filtered voltage u s . The
experimental results are presented confirming the functionality of inverter current i A , the electrical angular speed ωm of the
the proposed control method. rotor, and the dc link voltage u dc are the only measured
quantities, whereas the stator voltage u s and current i s of the
Index Terms — Vector control, induction motor, LC filter, ob- motor are estimated by an observer (the estimated quantities
server.
being marked by ‘^’). The system is controlled by nested con-
I. INTRODUCTION trol loops in the rotor flux reference frame.
A. Filter and Motor Models
T HE voltage generated by a PWM frequency converter con-
sists of sharp-edged voltage pulses. Sudden alteration of
the voltage causes unwanted effects such as bearing currents
In a reference frame rotating at angular speed ω s , the equa-
tions for the LC filter are
and high voltage stresses in motor insulations. The oscillation
di A R Lf 1
at the switching frequency causes additional losses and acous- = − jω s i A − iA + (u − u s ) (1)
tic noise. These phenomena can be eliminated by adding an dt Lf Lf A
LC filter to the output of the PWM inverter. In addition, the
du s 1
EMI shielding of the motor cable may be avoided if the output = − jω s u s + (i − i ) (2)
voltage of the inverter is nearly sinusoidal. dt Cf A s
The control of an induction motor becomes more difficult if
an LC filter is used. Usually, a very simple scalar control where L f is the inductance and RLf the series resistance of
method (volts-per-hertz control) is chosen. Although better the inductor, and C f is the capacitance of the filter.
control performance is needed in many cases, only few publi- The motor control is based on the inverse-Γ model of the
cations deal with the vector control of an induction motor fed induction motor in the rotor flux reference frame. The stator
via an LC filter. A deadbeat controller has been used to control and rotor voltage equations in this reference frame are
the inductor current and the capacitor voltage [1], the high- dψ
pass filtered stator voltage has been used to correct the voltage u s = Rs i s + s
+ jω sψ (3)
dt s
reference [2], and a multi-loop feedback controller has been
proposed [3]. In these methods, extra current or voltage meas- dψ
urements are needed in addition to the phase current and dc 0 = RR i R + R
+ j (ω s − ω m )ψ (4)
dt R
voltage measurements usual in a frequency converter. A chal-
lenge for the motor drive control design is to keep the number
u dc Lf is
of measurements low in order to obtain cost savings and reli-
ability improvements. IM
In this paper, a method is presented for the vector control of ωm
an induction motor fed by an inverter with an output LC filter. iA
us Cf
A cascade control method is used to control the inverter cur-
rent, the stator voltage, the stator current and the rotor speed. u A,ref
Observer
The system states are estimated by a full-order observer.
û s iˆ s
− + − + − + − +
PI P PI PI
i A,ref u s ,ref i s ,ref ωm,ref
The authors are with Helsinki University of Technology, Power
Electronics Laboratory, P.O. Box 3000, FIN-02015 HUT, Finland (e-mail:
janne.salomaki@hut.fi). Fig. 1. Principle of the control system.
030 2

ψˆ R iˆ s û s
ψ R,ref + isd ,ref i A,ref
+ u s ,ref + + + + + u A,ref
+ +
ωm,ref + + + +
isq ,ref jL′s jC f jL f

ωm iˆ s ω̂s û s iA

Motor Control LC Filter Control

Fig. 2. Complex signal flow diagram of the cascade control.

respectively, where ψ and ψ are the stator and rotor flux
s R
linkages, respectively, Rs and RR are the stator and rotor
resistances, respectively, i R is the rotor current, and ω m is the
electrical angular speed of the rotor. The stator and rotor flux
linkages are
ψ s = ( Ls′ + LM ) i s + LM i R
ψ R = LM (i s + i R )
respectively, where Ls′ denotes the stator transient inductance
and LM is the magnetizing inductance. Based on (1)-(6), the
state-space representation of the system can be written as
shown in (7) and (8) at the bottom of this page. The state vec-
tor is x = [i A u s i s ψ R ]T , and the two time constants are
defined as τ σ′ = Ls′ /( Rs + RR ) and τ r = LM / RR .
B. Cascade Control
Figure 2 illustrates the proposed cascade control of the sys-
tem in the rotor flux reference frame. In the LC filter control,
the innermost control loop governs the inverter current i A by
means of a PI controller, and the stator voltage u s is governed
by a P-type controller in the next control loop. In both control
loops, decoupling terms are used to compensate the cross-cou-
plings caused by the rotating reference frame.
The motor control is based on vector control and forms two
outermost loops of the cascade control. The stator current is
(5)
controlled by a PI-type controller with cross-coupling compen-
sation, and the rotor speed is governed by a PI-controller. In
(6)
addition, a PI-type rotor flux controller is used.
C. Observability
The observability of the system can be investigated using
the observability matrix
M o = [C C A C A 2 C A 3 ]T (9)
The system is observable if the rank of the observability matrix
is equal to the number of states [4]. The observability was
checked for various angular speeds of the rotor and the refer-
ence frame, indicating that the system is observable.

⎡ Rlf 1 ⎤
⎢− − jω s − 0 0 ⎥
⎢ Lf Lf ⎥ ⎡ 1 ⎤
⎢ 1 1 ⎥ ⎢L ⎥
⎢ − jω s − 0 ⎥
Cf Cf ⎢ f ⎥
x = ⎢ ⎥ x + ⎢ 0 ⎥u A (7)
⎢ 1 1 1 ⎛ 1 ⎞ ⎥ ⎢ 0 ⎥
⎢ 0 − − jω s ⎜⎜ − jω m ⎟⎟ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢ L ′ τ ′
σ L ′
s⎝ r τ ⎠ ⎥
s ⎢⎣ 0 ⎥⎦
⎢ 1 ⎥ 

⎢ 0 0 RR − − j(ω s − ω m )⎥ B
⎣ τ
 r 
⎦
A

i A = [1 0 0 0]x (8)
  


C
030 3

15 0.2
D. Full-Order Observer
10

Imaginary Axis (p.u)

Imaginary Axis (p.u)

The most essential part of the control is a full-order ob- 0.1
server, which is implemented in the estimated rotor flux refer- 5
ence frame, i.e., in a reference frame where ψˆ = ψˆ R + j 0 . 0 0
R
The observer is defined as −5
−0.1
xˆ = A xˆ + Bu A + K (i A − iˆ A ) (10) −10
−15 −0.2
where estimated states are marked by the symbol ‘^’ and −15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 −0.2 −0.1 0 0.1 0.2
Real Axis (p.u) Real Axis (p.u)
K = [k 1 k 2 k 3 k 4 ]T is the observer gain vector.
The digital implementation of the full-order observer based (a) (b)
on the conventional forward Euler discretization causes insta- Fig. 3. Observer poles obtained by pole placement as rotor speed changes
bility at higher speeds. Other alternatives, such as the back- from –1 to 1 p.u. and slip frequency changes from –0.05 to 0.05 p.u.: (a) pole
plot and (b) its magnification in the neighborhood of the origin.
ward Euler method or the bilinear transformation, hold the
stability but are more complicated to implement. A simple
symmetric Euler method has been found to be an effective and
reliable discretization method in electromechanical simulations 15 0.2

[5] and full-order flux observers [6]. The corresponding dis- 10

Imaginary Axis (p.u)

Imaginary Axis (p.u)

cretization of the full-order observer (10) is given in the Ap-
pendix.
The observer gain vector K can be selected in many ways.
The selection can be based on the pole placement method, or a
simple constant gain can be used, as will be presented in the
following.
1) Pole placement: The dynamics of the estimation error
~
x = x − xˆ are given by
x = ( A − KC)~
~ x (11)
In the pole placement method, the poles of the estimation error
dynamics are placed to desired locations.
Because the system model is time variant, the pole place-
ment should be carried out at every calculation step. However,
this would increase the computing time of the processor dra-
matically. A practical solution is to use gain scheduling: the
observer gain vector is calculated in advance as a function of
the angular speed of the rotor, and interpolation between
tabulated values is used during the operation. The poles also
depend on the angular slip frequency ωr = ω s − ω m as the
estimated rotor flux reference frame is used. If the gains ob-
tained for no-load operation are used, the slip frequency af-
fects only the imaginary parts of the observer poles, as illus-
trated in Fig. 3 for the example values used in the next sec-
tions. Therefore, the assumption of ωr = 0 in the pole place-
ment method does not cause stability problems.
2) Simple constant gain: The observer becomes relatively
simple when the real-valued gain K = [k1 0 0 0]T is se-
lected. By assuming that the estimated inverter current does
not interact with the estimated stator voltage, the transfer
function from the inverter current to its estimate can be written
as
iˆ A ( s) k1 k nal operating point [8]. The filter parameters are also given in
= ≈ 1 , (12)
i A (s) s + R Lf L f + jω s + k1 s + k1
0.1
5
0 0
−5
−0.1
−10
−15 −0.2
−15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 −0.2 −0.1 0 0.1 0.2
Real Axis (p.u) Real Axis (p.u)
(a) (b)
Fig. 4. Observer poles obtained by constant gain as rotor speed changes from
–1 to 1 p.u. and slip frequency changes from –0.05 to 0.05 p.u.: (a) pole plot
and (b) its magnification in the neighborhood of the origin.
where the last approximation holds if k1 >> R Lf L f + jω s .
Thus the gain k1 is approximately the bandwidth of the in-
verter current estimator, and it can be selected so that the esti-
mator is at least twice as fast as the controller of the inverter
current. Figure 4 illustrates the observer poles as the speed and
the slip of the motor are varied. All poles stay in the left half-
plane, indicating that the observer is stable.
III. SIMULATION RESULTS
The behavior of the system was investigated by means of
computer simulations with Matlab/Simulink software. The data
of a 2.2-kW four-pole induction motor (400 V, 50 Hz), given
in Table I, were used for the simulations. The sampling fre-
quency of 5 kHz was equal to the switching frequency. The LC
filter was designed to have a cutoff frequency of 566 Hz in or-
der to meet a rule of thumb that the cutoff frequency should be
about one decade below the switching frequency and one dec-
ade above the nominal fundamental frequency [7]. The funda-
mental-frequency voltage drop in the filter inductance was
chosen to be less than 5 % of the nominal voltage in the nomi-
Table I. The bandwidths of the controllers were 500 Hz for the
inverter current, 250 Hz for the stator voltage, 150 Hz for the
030 4

TABLE I 1

ω (p.u.)
PARAMETERS OF THE MOTOR AND THE LC FILTER
0.5
Motor Parameters

m
Stator resistance Rs 3.67 Ω 0
Rotor resistance R R 1.65 Ω 0 2 4 6 8 10
Stator transient inductance Ls′ 0.0209 H
2
Magnetizing inductance LM 0.264 H
Total moment of inertia J 0.0155 kgm 2

T/TN
1
Rated speed nN 1430 r/min
Rated current I N 5.0 A 0
Rated torque TN 14.6 Nm 0 2 4 6 8 10
1
LC Filter Parameters

ψ (p.u.)
Inductance L f 8.0 mH 0.5
Capacitance C f 9.9 µF

R
Series Resistance RLf 0.1 Ω
0
0 2 4 6 8 10
t (s)
stator current, 15 Hz for the rotor speed, and 3 Hz for the rotor
flux. The poles of the observer were set to (–7.1 ± 11.8) p.u., Fig. 5. Simulation results showing a sequence with speed and load changes.
The first subplot shows the rotor speed (solid) and its reference (dashed). The
−2.7 p.u. and –0.02 p.u., the base value of the angular fre- second subplot shows the electromagnetic torque (solid) and its reference
quency being 2π ⋅ 50 rad/s . The reference value of the inverter (dashed) normalized by the rated torque TN . The third subplot shows the
voltage u A, ref was used in the observer and control instead of rotor flux linkage (solid) and its estimate (dashed).
uA .
Figure 5 shows an example of simulated sequences, con- 500
Voltage (V)

sisting of accelerations, nominal load torque steps at various

speeds, and a deceleration ramp to standstill. The results show 0
that the operation of the system is successful. The rotor speed
is in accordance with its reference, and the torque behaves as -500
expected. The rotor flux linkage is reduced by 15 % at the 4.6 4.61 4.62 4.63 4.64 4.65 4.66 4.67 4.68

highest speed because of field weakening. The voltage and 10

current waveforms are illustrated in detail in Fig. 6. The stator 5
Current (A)

voltage and current are nearly sinusoidal.

0

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS -5

The experimental setup is illustrated in Fig. 7. The 2.2-kW -10

4.6 4.61 4.62 4.63 4.64 4.65 4.66 4.67 4.68
four-pole induction motor was fed by a frequency converter Time (s)
controlled by a dSPACE DS1103 PPC/DSP board. The pa- Fig. 6. Voltage and current waveforms from the simulation shown in Fig. 5.
rameters of the experimental setup correspond to those given The first subplot shows the inverter output voltage (phase-to-phase) and the
in Table I. Three 3.3-µF filter capacitors were used in delta stator voltage (phase-to-phase). The second subplot shows the inverter current
and the stator current.
connection, giving the per-phase capacitance value of 9.9 µF.
The measured rotor speed was used as a feedback signal for
the control. The shaft torque was measured using a HBM
Freq. PM Freq.
T10F torque flange for monitoring purposes. A permanent LC filter IM
servo
converter converter
magnet servo motor was used to provide load torque.
Figure 8 presents experimental results corresponding to the Speed
Torque
simulations shown in Fig. 5. Constant motor parameters were
used in the observer and control. The measured performance
corresponds to the simulation results rather well. The total
moment of inertia of the setup was 2.2 times the inertia of the
dSPACE
induction motor, which explains a large part of the difference
between the measured shaft torque and the electromagnetic Fig. 7. Experimental setup. Control of induction motor (IM) is investigated,
torque reference during the accelerations. However, the elec- and permanent magnet (PM) servo motor is used as loading machine. Meas-
ured shaft torque is used only for monitoring.
tromagnetic torque reference is far too high in no-load opera-
tion at the highest speed, at which the main flux saturation has
ing experimental results are shown in Fig. 9, and the measured
decreased because of the field weakening. Therefore, the
voltage and current waveforms are illustrated in detail in Fig.
measured saturation characteristic of the magnetizing induc-
10. The results are in good agreement with the simulation re-
tance was added to the observer and control. The correspond-
sults when the main flux saturation is taken into account.
030 5

1 500
ω (p.u.)

Voltage (V)
0.5
0
m

0
0 2 4 6 8 10
-500
2 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08
T/TN

1 10

Current (A)
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 0
1
-5
ψ (p.u.)

0.5 -10
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08
R

Time (s)
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 Fig. 10. Experimental result showing voltage and current waveforms as the
t (s) rotation speed is 25 Hz and the load torque is 14.6 Nm. The first subplot
shows the inverter output voltage (phase-to-phase) and the stator voltage
Fig. 8. Experimental results showing a sequence with speed and load changes
(phase-to-phase). The second subplot shows the inverter current and the stator
as observer gain is obtained by pole placement and constant motor parameters
current.
are used in observer and control. The first subplot shows the rotor speed
(solid) and its reference (dashed). The second subplot shows the measured
shaft torque (solid) and the electromagnetic torque reference (dashed). The
third subplot shows the rotor flux reference (solid) and the estimated rotor 1
ω (p.u.)

flux (dashed).
0.5
m

0
1 0 2 4 6 8 10
ω (p.u.)

0.5 2
m

T/TN

0 1
0 2 4 6 8 10
0
2 0 2 4 6 8 10
1
T/TN

1
ψ (p.u.)

0 0.5
R

0 2 4 6 8 10
1 0
0 2 4 6 8 10
ψ (p.u.)

t (s)
0.5
R

Fig. 11. Experimental results showing a sequence with speed and load
0 changes as the observer gain is constant. The explanations of the curves are as
0 2 4 6 8 10 in Fig. 8.
t (s)

Fig. 9. Experimental results showing a sequence with speed and load changes
as observer gain is obtained by pole placement and main flux saturation is
taken into account. The explanations of the curves are as in Fig. 8.
Experiments were also carried out using an observer with a
constant gain k1 = 2π ⋅ 1000 s −1 . The main flux saturation was
taken into account in the observer and control. The results are
shown in Fig. 11. The performance is nearly equal to that of
the more complicated observer.
V. CONCLUSIONS
When the inverter output voltage is filtered by an LC-filter,
the vector control of an induction motor can be based on
nested control loops. The system states can be estimated by a
full-order observer, requiring only the measurements of in-
verter current, dc voltage, and rotor speed. Simulation and
experimental results show that the proposed control method
operates correctly. The observer gain can be selected by means
of pole placement, or a constant gain can be used.
REFERENCES
[1] M. Kojima, K. Hirabayashi, Y. Kawabata, E.C. Ejiogu, and T.
Kawabata, “Novel vector control system using deadbeat controlled
PWM inverter with output LC filter,” in Conf. Rec. IEEE/IAS Annu.
Meeting, vol. 3, Pittsburgh, PA, Oct. 2002, pp. 2102-2109.
[2] A. Nabae, H. Nakano, and Y. Okamura, “A novel control strategy of the
inverter with sinusoidal voltage and current outputs,” in Proc. IEEE
PESC’94, vol. 1, Taipei, Taiwan, June 1994, pp. 154-159.
[3] R. Seliga and W. Koczara, “Multiloop feedback control strategy in sine-
wave voltage inverter for an adjustable speed cage induction motor
drive system”, in Proc. EPE 2001, Graz, Austria, Aug. 2001, CD-ROM.
[4] G.F. Franklin, J. D. Powell, and A. Emami-Naeini, Feedback Control of
Dynamic Systems, 4th ed., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.
[5] J. Niiranen, “Fast and accurate symmetric Euler algorithm for electro-
mechanical simulations,” in Proc. Electrimacs’99, Lisboa, Portugal,
Sept. 1999, pp. 71-78.
030 6

[6] M. Hinkkanen and J. Luomi, “Parameter sensitivity of full-order flux APPENDIX

observers for induction motors,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat. vol. 39,
DIGITAL IMPLEMENTATION
July/Aug. 2003, pp. 1127-1135
[7] J. Steinke, C. Stulz, and P. Pohjalainen, “Use of a LC filter to achieve a The full-order observer (10) is discretized using the sym-
motor friendly performance of the PWM voltage source inverter,” in
metric Euler method [5]. In contrast to the forward Euler
Proc. IEEE IEMDC’97, Milwaukee, WI, May 1997, pp. TA2/4.1-
TA2/4.3. method, the new state values are used when available. The
[8] C. Xiyou, Y. Bin, and G. Yu, “The engineering design and the optimiza- discretized observer is given below in (13), where the sample
tion of inverter output RLC filter in AC motor drive system,” in Proc. time is denoted by Ts .
IEEE IECON'02, vol. 1, Sevilla, Spain, Nov. 2002, pp. 175-180.

⎡ R Lf 1 1 ~ ~ ⎤
iˆAd (n + 1) = iˆAd ( n) + Ts ⎢− iˆAd (n) + ωˆ s (n)iˆAq (n) − uˆ sd ( n) + u Ad (n) + k1d iAd (n) − k1q iAq (n) ⎥ (13a)
⎢⎣ L f Lf Lf ⎥⎦
⎡ R Lf 1 1 ~ ~ ⎤
iˆAq (n + 1) = iˆAq (n) + T s ⎢ − iˆAq (n) − ωˆ s (n)iˆAd ( n + 1) − uˆ sq (n) + u Aq ( n) + k1q iAd (n) + k1d iAq ( n) ⎥ (13b)
⎢⎣ L f Lf Lf ⎥⎦

⎡ 1 1 ˆ ~ ~ ⎤
uˆ sd ( n + 1) = uˆ sd (n) + Ts ⎢ iˆAd (n + 1) + ωˆ s (n)uˆ sq ( n) − i sd (n ) + k 2 d i Ad ( n) − k 2 q i Aq ( n)⎥ (13c)
⎢⎣ C f Cf ⎥⎦

⎡ 1 1 ˆ ~ ~ ⎤
uˆ sq (n + 1) = uˆ sq (n) + Ts ⎢ iˆAq (n + 1) − ωˆ s ( n)uˆ sd (n + 1) − i sq (n) + k 2 q i Ad ( n) + k 2 d i Aq (n )⎥ (13d)
⎢⎣ C f Cf ⎥⎦

⎡ 1 1 ˆ 1 ~ ~ ⎤
iˆsd (n + 1) = iˆsd (n) + Ts ⎢ uˆ sd ( n + 1) − i sd (n) + ωˆ s (n)iˆsq ( n) + ψˆ R ( n) + k 3d iAd (n) − k 3q iAq ( n)⎥ (13e)
⎣ L s′ τ σ′ L s′ τ r ⎦

⎡ 1 1 ˆ ω ( n) ~ ~ ⎤
iˆsq (n + 1) = iˆsq (n) + Ts ⎢ uˆ sq (n + 1) − i sq (n) − ωˆ s ( n)iˆsd (n + 1) − m ψˆ R ( n) + k 3q i Ad (n) + k 3d i Aq (n)⎥ (13f)
⎣ s
L ′ τ ′
σ L ′
s ⎦

⎡ 1 ~ ~ ⎤
ψˆ R ( n + 1) = ψˆ R (n) + T s ⎢ R R iˆsd (n + 1) − ψˆ R (n) + k 4 d iAd ( n) − k 4 q iAq (n)⎥ (13g)
⎣ τr ⎦
~ ~
iˆsq (n + 1) R R + k 4 q i Ad ( n) + k 4 d i Aq (n)
ωˆ s (n + 1) = + ω m (n) (13h)
ψˆ R ( n + 1)