Sensorless Control of Induction Motors with Simultaneous On-line Estimation of

Rotor Resistance and Speed Based on the Feedforward Torque Control Scheme
S. K. Jeong', Z. G. Lee', H. A. Toliya?, P.Niazi'
'Division of Mechanical Engineering, F'ukyong National University, Pusan, Korea
E-mail : skjeong@pknu.ac.!u
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3 128
E-mail : toliyat@ee.tamu.edu

Abstract - In tbis paper, a new speed sensorless induction
motor scheme which can work at any speed including the lem
speed is presented. The proposed method is robust to rotor
resistance variations. Simultaneous on-line estimations of speed
and rotor resistance are realized based on a feedforward type
torque control scheme. The rotor flux with a low frequency
sinusoidal waveform is used to help the estimation. The control
scheme has no current minor loop to determine voltage
references. Since the proposed estimation does not depend on
any derivative term of currents and stator voltages, it
contributes to speed sensorless with good performance at very
low speed repion. Furthermore, the proposed control b simply
using motor parameters and stator curreuts without
determining any PI gains for current feedback and any signal
injection for the rotor resistance estimation. Simulations results
snpported by experiments are given to show the effectiveness of
this method.
I. INTRODUCTION
A number of sensorless induction motor drives have been
developed in the past [1-51. However, the performances of
these sensorless drives are not sufficient when compared to
the sensored ones. A major drawback of these drives is due to
the difficulty of control at low stator frequency. During this
region of opmtiou, the signal-to-noise ratio of the stator
current is decreased significantly and the effect of stator
resistance voltage drop is not negligible. Another difficulty is
to ensure the robustness of drives against parameter
variations, especially rotor resistance. Also, it is well known
that simultaneous estimation of speed and rotor resistance is
hardly obtained in the vector control induction motor drives
with constant rotor flux [3].
To solve these problems, we suggest a novel speed
sensorless scheme based on a feedfonvard torque control
technique [6]. The control scheme has some different features
compared with the classical vector controls. First, it controls
regulators. Third, the electromagnetic torque is controlled
very fast and independent of the rotor flux without inducing
spike in the currents because the control voltage was derived
theoretically from the steady state currents values. Since
speed and rotor resistance estimations do not depend on the
stator resistances, stator voltages, and any other derivatives of
currents, it is possible to achieve speed sensorless with good
performance even during low speed region. Especially, we do
not inject any high frequency signal to estimate the rotor
resistance, thus we expect less current ripples and we do not
need to design a high band-pass filter to reject them out.
Hence, we can reduce the burden of hardware to inject high
frequency signals and also software to detect these high
fiequency signals.
In this paper, at 6rsf the feedfonvard type torque control is
described in detail using the machine equivalent circuit
eqnations. Then,the estimation eqnations for speed and rotor
resistance are derived from stator currents in d, q reference
frame. Atter that, the speed sensorless based on the torque
control scheme is descriied- Finally, through several
simulation results using a PWM voltage-source inverter and
experiments based on a DSP control system, the validity of
the proposed method is verified.
D. THE MOTOR MODEL AND TI33 FEEDFORWARD TORQUE
CONTORI.
Suppose that the stator current is x, ,the rotor current is x2,
and the control input stator voltage is U,, then the dynamic
equations of induction motor(I.M) are given as follow:
[;I=[ MRi DI -+ ide)
W R2 + hMD p'].
( D - j d e ) x2
(1)

rotor flux as a sinusoidal waveform in the d,q referencz
h m e without affecting the torque control performance. It is
possible to estimate on-line both speed and rotor resistance
using the rotor flux.Second, it does not have any current feed
back loops. Thus, we do not need to consider any phase
compensations based on the delay between stator voltages
and stator currents. Since control voltage can be determined
using this feedfonvard technique, we can exclude
complicated process in order to design PI gains in c m t
where R,, L,, I , ( i 4 2 : statcu and mtor) are the
induct?ncedI*in~qrespedively..Also,M isthe
mutual induclance, 8, is the eleceical rmgularpositios m d D is the
Metmtial ope" (4~It 3 is)n.o t e d h e bat xI,x,, and U,
me o o m p h variables which have two "pmds a and B , m
thestaticmaxyrefermceftame.
Ibe instaataneouS elech"gne6c tcque of LM using the
variable5x, andx, is given by

0-7803-7817-21031$17.WQZW3 IEEE 1837


T=NMlm[xl ?,I (2)
Where N is the pole pair number. The symbol “Im”
rqmsents the imaginary part of the variables and the
horizontal bar “-” means conjugate complex variable.
Generally, the rotor flux and the rotor current can be
defined as rotating vectors which have amplitudes and phases
given by (3) and (4).
In (3) and (4), the f (1) and g(t) represent phase angles of
the rotor flux and the rotor current, respectively. They will be
abbreviated as f and g hereafter to simplify the equations.
Since the electrical torque of LM can be defined as a vector
product of the rotor current and the rotor flux such as
T = N;krsin(-g), a new expression for x2 is obtained from
(4).
Substituting (3) and (5) in the rotor side of the induction
motor equation (l), we can drive (6).
From the real part of (€9,the inverse tangent of g is written
as.
(7)
Then, the rotor current is described by (8) which is obtained
by substituting(7) in (5).
The stator current x1 is also rewritten by substituting for
4 and the newly obtained x, in (3).
From (8) and (9), it is noted that there are no m s i e n t
terms about time t. Thus, it is obvious from (2) that
1838
theoretically we can control the instantaneous torque without
having any transient torque.
The command voltage as a control input which can realize
very quick torque response is derived from the stator side of
the induction motor equation (1) using these xIand x l .
m. SPEED SENSOWSS CONTROL .ALGORITHM
The rotor speed can be estimated using (I 1) taking the
imaginary part of (6) and replacing the torque term by the
stator current according to (9).
It is noted that the second term of the right hand side in
(11) m e a slip frequency. As a result, the speed can be
calculated very simply using the motor parameters, stator
frequency, the rotor f l u , and the stator current. From (ll),
the estimated speed is closely related to the motor parameters.
Particularly, it is well known that the rotor resistance varies
during motor operation due to the increase of temperame in
the rotor winding. Therefore, we need to estimate its value.
From the real part of (9), the rotor resistance can be
described as (12).
It is noted here again that the rotor flux has to be
commanded as a sinusoidal waveform to estimate the rotor
resistance, since the deferential value of rotor flux is
necess;uy in the dq reference fiame. Another i m p ” t point
is that the rotor resistance has a possibility of diversion if the
denominator of (12) is near zero. To overcome this problem,
the rotor resistance is calculated by integrating the stator
current and the rotor flux at every quarter cycle such as (13).
 Fig. 1 illustrates the suggested speed sensorless control complicated thanthe previous stepwise command.
system The system is consisted of four major parts, speed Motor speed is set at 15 rpm and IS0 rpm,respectively.
controller, torqne controller, speed estimator, and rotor The rotor flux is commanded to be a consfant value in Fig.
resistance estimator. Z(a). However, in Fig. 2@), it varies with time which is given
In this control scheme, there is no current feedback loop by 1, =O.SZ5{l+O.lsin(lOf)} Weber.
and also the current information is not used for producing the Fig. Z(a) and Fig. Z@) are consisted of three and four
voltage command pieces of figures, respectively. The tirst one represents torque
responses according to the step and M torque references,
N. NUMERICAL
sIMvLAnoN respectively. They sho-w that the torque responses accurately
To verify the proposed sensorless control scheme, three follow their respected commanded values. The second one
separate simulations are performed using the P W M voltage- expresses voltage commands to achieve the torque references.
source inverter and an 1.M whose parameters are listed in When the toque reference is changed abruptly, a very high
Table I. The carrier fkquency is set at 4 kHz and the voltage is added to the steady state value to eliminate the
sampling times for speed calculation and current integration traosient torque response based on the f e e d f m d torque
of 1.M model are set at 1 ms, and 1 11s respectively. At lirst, control. The third one represents the stator currents responses
the simulation results for feedfomard torque control under the voltage commands. The last one in Fig. Z(b) depicts
performances are investigatedbased on Fig. 1. the variable rotor flux. These results show that the torque
controller performs correctly even though the rotor flux is
commanded to be sinusoidal.
Fig. 3 shows the estimation results of the speed and rotor
PR I.S[!dq N 2 resistance. Among them, the first one depiqs the estimation
speed and rotor resistance, respectively. These results show
uR 220/380[P7 xR 6.6/3.8[,4] that the estimated values well coincide with their actual
values. The rotor flux waveform was given as
RI 3.7I[Q] R, 2.79[Q]
1 ,=0.525(1 tO.lsin(f)) Weber. The initial value of the rotor
L, 236.79[ mH ] L, 236.79[ mH ] resistance in Fig. 3@) was given appropriately to confirm
M 220.42[mH] J o.0O21Nm~s2/r~d1 the convergence characteristic of it to its actual value.

V. EXPEIUMENTALREsULT
Fig. Z(a) shows the torque response when the torque
Fig.4 shows the experimental hardware set up based on
reference is changed abmptly stepwise f “ 3 N.m to 5 N.m
at time equal 50 milliseconds. Fig. 2@)also shows the torque DSP system The dead time of inverter was 5 fis and the
carrier ftequency was &t at 2.5 kHz,and the sampliig time
rcsponse to the commanded torque, M, whicb is more

1839

Fig.4. DSP -based h d w n e sct up for the expnimCnt
1840
was 1 ms. Also the A/D converter to calculate the current had
12 bits resolution and 3.2 ps conversion time. The rotor flux
was givenas .I,=0.6(1+0.1sin(t)) Weberduringexperiment.
Fig. 5 represents experimental results of estimating the
speed and the rotor resistance using the hardware shown in
Fig. 4. The motor parametem are shown m Table I. Fig. 5(a)
shows, the reference speed, actual speed from an encoder,
and the estimated speed, under steady state at 3 rpm. The
estimated speed shows good agreement with the actual speed.
Fig. 5 @ ) shows an estimated rotor resistance using (12).
Actually there are some disagreements between the real value
and the estimated one. However, the filtered estimated value
followed the a d value very closely after a few seconds.
 U.. .
g 0.4

”i IJ
1.0 I I

2 03

Fig. 5(c) and Fig. S(d) illustrate the stator currents in d, q
axes and the mtor flux, respectively. They were used for
estimating the rotor speed and rotor resistance. The ermr
between the rotor flux reference and the response in Fig. S(d)
is the reason of imprecise estimation of the rotor resistance.
Fig. 6 shows an experimental result of speed sensorless
control. Since low speed operation was of interest, speed was
commanded from 0 rpm to 3 rpm under no-load.
It is sbownthatiheresultofspdsensorlessm m l followsfbe
actual speed closely.
VI CONCLUSION
In this paper, a novel speed sensorless control scheme
based on the feedfonvard torque control was proposed.
Especially, the method aimed at the simultaneous estimation
of the rotor speed and the rotor resistance on-line. Through
simulation results, the validity of the proposed sensorless
control scheme was initially verified. The experimental
results for sensorless control with variable rotor flux
reference also showed good agreement with the theory even
at very low speed such as a few of rpm

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