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Direct Torque Control of an Induction Motor Using a Single Current Sensor

Manuele Bertoluzzo, Giuseppe Buja, Fellow, IEEE, and Roberto Menis, Member, IEEE
AbstractA novel scheme for the direct torque control (DTC) of an induction motor (IM) is proposed, which uses a single sensor of current inserted in the inverter dc link. The rationale behind the proposal is to develop a low-cost but high performance IM drive. The scheme exploits a simple and robust algorithm to reconstruct the stator currents needed to estimate the motor ux and torque. The algorithm operates in two stages: rst, it predicts the stator currents from a model of the motor and then adjusts the prediction on the basis of the sensed dc-link current. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the ability of the scheme in reproducing the performance of a traditional DTC IM drive. Index TermsDirect torque control (DTC), induction motor (IM), sensor count reduction.

In detail, this paper is organized as follows. Section II reviews the operation of a traditional DTC scheme. Section III presents the proposed DTC scheme with a single current sensor. Section IV sets forth the algorithm to reconstruct the stator currents. Section V analyzes the performance of the novel scheme by experiments. Section VI concludes the paper. II. DTC O PERATION The block diagram of an IM drive controlled with the traditional DTC scheme is drawn in Fig. 1. The drive is equipped with two sensors of current inserted in the stator phases and one sensor of voltage connected across the dc link. The inputs to the drive are the references s and for the stator ux magnitude and the motor torque, respectively. Their actual values are estimated in the feedback path by help of the following blocks: 1) stator current SV calculator; 2) stator voltage SV calculator; and 3) ux and torque estimator. In this paper, the SV representation is obtained by an amplitude-invariant transformation of the three-phase variables into a two-axis stationary frame d, q with the axis d aligned along the phase a of the stator. The stator current SV calculator computes the SV is of the stator current by
2 4 2 ias + ibs ej 3 + ics ej 3 is = 3

I. I NTRODUCTION N induction motor (IM) drive controlled with the direct torque control (DTC) technique exhibits performance similar to a eld-oriented drive despite the simpler structure [1][3]. In fact, a DTC scheme accomplishes the closed-loop control of the stator ux magnitude and the electromagnetic torque of the motor without the intermediary of any current loop or shaft sensor. To this end, the DTC scheme senses the stator currents and the dc-link voltage and processes them, together with the states of the inverter switches, to estimate the actual values of the controlled variables. The hardware of a DTC scheme could further be reduced by using only one sensor of current and by inserting it in the inverter dc link. The aim of this paper is to develop and to test such a solution. For this purpose, a suitable algorithm for the reconstruction of the stator currents is devised, and the performance of the resulting drive is evaluated. The issue of reconstructing the output currents of an inverter from the current in the dc link has been dealt with by a number of papers [4][7]. However, they are focused on inverters modulated with the space-vector (SV) technique, and no paper, apart from [8], is concerned with DTC. Furthermore, Habetler and Divan [8] limit themselves in considering a resonant dc-link inverter oscillating at high frequency; and hence, the solution arranged there is not applicable to standard DTC-operated inverters.

(1)

where ias and ibs are the sensed stator currents, and ics is determined as ics = (ias + ibs ) (2)

because the motor has no neutral connection. The stator voltage SV calculator computes the SV v s of the voltage applied to the motor by v s =
2 4 2 Vdc Sa + Sb ej 3 + Sc ej 3 3

(3)

Manuscript received March 8, 2004; revised January 5, 2006. Abstract published on the Internet March 18, 2006. M. Bertoluzzo and G. Buja are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy (e-mail: bertoluzzo@ die.unipd.it; giuseppe.buja@unipd.it). R. Menis is with the Department of Electrotechnics, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy (e-mail: menis@ univ.trieste.it). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TIE.2006.874415

where Vdc is the inverter dc-link voltage, and Sa , Sb , and Sc are the states of the upper switches of the inverter (S = 1 means switch closed and S = 0 means switch open). The eight voltage SVs generated by the inverter are drawn in Fig. 2. They are marked with a subscript from 0 to 7 and are labeled with the switch states (Sa , Sb , Sc ). SVs 16 are termed active inverter voltage vectors, whereas SVs 0 and 7 are termed zero-inverter-voltage vectors. The ux and torque estimator determines at rst the stator s by integrating the IM stator voltage equation, which ux SV

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Fig. 1.

Conventional DTC IM drive.

Fig. 3. (a) Flux and (b) torque controllers. TABLE I INVERTER VOLTAGE SV SELECTION TABLE FOR THE STATOR FLUX SV IN REGION 1

Fig. 2.

Inverter voltage SVs and stator ux regions.

is given as s d v s = Rs is + dt i.e., by s = ( vs Rs is )dt (5) (4) selector. The controllers are of hysteresis type as shown in Fig. 3, where h is the ux hysteresis band, h is the torque hysteresis band, and is the offset of the torque hysteresis band. The comparators are entered by the ux es and torque and v , which e errors and deliver the control signals v s represent the digitized voltage demands required to keep the errors within the hysteresis bands of the controllers. The inverter voltage selector decides, by help of a table, which one among the eight voltage SVs generated by the inverter fullls the control demands and applies it to the motor. Decision depends on the region spanned by the stator ux SV. As an example, in region 1, Table I is used. It can be easily realized that the three-level torque comparator together with the selection rules in Table I has a number of merits. Let the motor operate in steady state so that the torque errors are smaller than . For positive errors (and clockwise 3 are applied to the 2 or V motor rotation), the active vectors V motor, whereas for negative errors, they are applied the zero 7 . The choice between the two zero vectors is 0 or V vectors V dictated by the demand of having a low switching count. Under these circumstances, the switching rate of the inverter is kept at a minimum. Instead, when the torque reference undergoes a large step-down change, ensuing for instance from a sudden request of speed reversal, the torque error is greater than , 6 are applied to the motor in 5 and V and the active vectors V

where Rs is the stator resistance. Then, from (5), the following variables are estimated: 1) stator ux magnitude, by s = 2) motor torque, by = 3 p(iqs ds ids qs ) 2 (7)
2 2 ds + qs

(6)

3) 60 region (or sextant) r of the stationary plane where the stator ux vector lies, by manipulating the d and s as illustrated in [1]. In Fig. 2, the q components of sextants are distinguished by a circled number, and their boundaries are given by the dashed-line radii. The DTC scheme develops its control action by means of the three blocks placed in the forward path in Fig. 1, namely: 1) ux controller; 2) torque controller; and 3) inverter voltage

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Fig. 4. Single-current-sensor DTC IM drive.

place of the zero ones, thus speeding up the torque response and endowing the drive with speed-reversal capabilities. III. S INGLE C URRENT S ENSOR DTC S CHEME The proposed DTC scheme is drawn in Fig. 4. The scheme senses the inverter dc-link current only and goes back to the stator currents by means of a reconstruction algorithm. The algorithm is incorporated in the ux and torque estimator and utilizes the sensed current, the switch states (Sa , Sb , Sc ), and the stator ux SV estimated in the previous sampling interval. In addition to the two sensors of current in the stator phases, most of the traditional DTC IM drives mount an additional current sensor in the dc link for fault protection. With the proposed scheme, only the sensor in the dc link is still used and is committed for both the protection and the estimation task. It is worth to note that the hardware of the resulting drive is the same as that of a voltage-to-frequency (V /F ) drive. IV. S TATOR C URRENT R ECONSTRUCTION The reconstruction algorithm works in two stages. In the rst stage, the stator currents are predicted, whereas in the second stage, the predicted values are adjusted in accordance with the sensed dc-link current. The stator current reconstruction as well as the ux and torque estimation and the DTC control run in discrete time. A. Prediction Stage The prediction stage relies on the dynamics of the stator current. A model of them can be found from the stator voltage (4) and the ux relationship, which is dened as sr + Ls s = is (8)

Fig. 5.

IM equivalent circuit.

where e sr is the SV of the back electromotive force (EMF) behind the stator transient inductance, which is given as e sr = sr d . dt (10)

The three-phase equivalent circuit associated to (9) is drawn in Fig. 5. Rearranging (9) yields d is 1 = dt Ls sr d v s Rs is dt . (11)

Compared with the stator ux, the dynamics of the rotor ux are much more sluggish [9]. Then, the change in the magnitude of the rotor ux SV within a sampling interval is negligible, and sr can be simplied, i.e., the time rate of sr d sr = jsr dt (12)

sr is the rotor ux SV referred to the stator with the where ratio Lm /Lr , and Ls is the stator transient inductance. Substitution of (8) into (4) gives d is +e sr is + Ls v s = Rs dt (9)

sr . Such a frequency where sr is the angular frequency of can be calculated as the derivative of the spatial position sr sr , i.e., as of sr = dsr . dt (13)

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TABLE II DC-LINK IN-SERIES STATOR PHASE CURRENT VERSUS INVERTER UPPER-SWITCH STATES

in-series phase is a, the equations of the adjustment stage are as follows: ia (k ) = im a (k )

p ia (k ) = im a (k ) ia (k )

By (12), (11) becomes 1 d is sr ). = ( vs Rs is jsr dt Ls (14)

ia (k ) 2 i a (k ) ic (k ) = ip c (k ) 2 ib (k ) = ip b (k )

(18)

Discrete integration of (14) gives the prediction of current at the instant k as a function of the variables at the instant (k 1). Being the behavior of the rotor ux smooth, discretization of (14) can be simply carried out by means of the rectangular rule. The resulting equation is Ts ip s (k ) = is (k 1) + Ls sr (k 1) v s (k 1) Rs is (k 1) jsr (k 1) (15)

where superscript p denotes predicted current, Ts is the sampling period, v s (k 1) is the inverter voltage SV selected at the instant (k 1) and applied over the actual sampling interval, sr (k 1) are calculated respectively by and sr (k 1) and the following equations derived from (13) and (8): sr (k 1) = sr (k 1) sr (k 2) Ts (16) (17)

s (k 1) Ls sr (k 1) = is (k 1). B. Adjustment Stage

When the inverter applies an active voltage SV to the motor, there is always one stator phase that is connected in series to the dc-link rail of the inverter, either to the positive or to the negative polarity, whereas the other two phases are connected in parallel to the opposite polarity. The in-series phase can be easily identied from the states of the upper switches of the inverter, and the current owing in this phase is either equal or opposite to the dc-link current as illustrated in Table II. When the inverter applies a zero-voltage SV, the motor terminals are shorted and the dc-link current is zero. The adjustment stage takes advantage of Table II to enhance the reconstruction of the stator currents. In this stage, the predicted current of the dc-link in-series phase is discarded and is replaced with the sensed dc-link current. Because of the modeling and processing errors in the prediction stage, the predicted value may differ from the sensed current. This implies that the current of one or both of the other two stator phases also differs from their actual value. To keep the sum of the stator currents at zero and, at the same time, to improve the overall reconstruction of current, the deviation detected for the current of the in-series phase is split between the other two phases. Of course, the adjustment stage is not executed when a zerovoltage SV is applied to the motor. Splitting is done in a straightforward manner by dividing the current deviation into two equal parts. When, for instance, the

where superscript m denotes measured current. The equal-split policy would be correct to the extent that the equivalent circuits of the two phases have the same behavior. Because the element that differentiates the two circuits is the back EMF, this policy is fairly precise at low speed, when the back EMF behind the stator transient inductance is less than the voltage drop across the stator impedance. On the other hand, at low speed, there is a great number of zero-inverter-voltage SVs applied to the motor, which does not allow the frequent adjustment of the prediction, and the current reconstruction becomes inaccurate because of the propagation of the errors in the prediction stage. The equal-split policy, instead, is quite inaccurate at high speed, but the great number of active inverter voltage SVs applied to the motor permits the frequent adjustment of the stator currents, thus overriding the errors introduced by the inaccurate split. To cope with the reconstruction errors at low speed, the offset of the torque controller hysteresis band is gradually shrunk as the angular speed of the rotor ux diminishes. Then, for 6 5 or V negative torque errors, active inverter voltage SVs (i.e., V for the stator ux in region 1) are applied to the motor in place of the zero-inverter-voltage SVs for an increasing number of sampling intervals, and this enables a more frequent adjustment of the current prediction. For the drive described in the next section, satisfactory operation has been achieved by linearly decreasing from h to 0, with the decrease that starts at 25% of the rated motor frequency and reaches 0 at about 15% of it. When = 0, only active voltage SVs are applied to the motor, and the adjustment of current is carried out at every sampling interval.

V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS A DTC IM drive arranged as in Fig. 2 has been set up and tested. The experimental rig is illustrated in Fig. 6. The control program is implemented in the digital signal processor (DSP) board and cycles every 50 s. The basic functions carried out by the control program are listed as follows: 1) acquisition of the signals coming from the sensors of current and voltage in the dc link; 2) processing of the signals by means of the reconstruction, estimation, and control algorithms; and 3) command of the inverter switches. The owchart of the control program is drawn in Fig. 7. Data on the rig devices are listed in the Appendix. The stator ux magnitude, the motor torque, and the actual and reconstructed stator currents are downloaded by the DSP to the oscilloscope for display purposes. The personal computer

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Fig. 6. Experimental rig. Fig. 8. Experimental results at 75% of the rated speed.

Fig. 7. Flowchart of the single-sensor DTC control program.

in the rig is employed for editing the control program and commanding the drive. Several tests have been executed on the DTC IM drive to evaluate its static and dynamic performance. The results of three signicant tests are reported here. In all the tests, the motor is operated at rated stator ux. In the rst test, the torque reference is solicited with a square wave, switching from plus to minus half the rated torque while the motor is running at 75% of the rated speed. The period of the square wave is short enough to keep the motor speed nearly constant. The second test is a replica of the rst one but with the motor running at 10% of the rated speed. The motor torque, the stator ux magnitude, and the actual stator currents obtained with the rst test are plotted in Fig. 8(a)(c), respectively. The reconstructed values of current, if reported in Fig. 8(c), would be indistinguishable from the actual ones. To highlight the difference, a portion of current and the respective reconstructed value are magnied and plotted in Fig. 8(d). The quantities obtained with the second test are plotted in Fig. 9(a)(d). The results of the two tests show the

Fig. 9.

Experimental results at 10% of the rated speed.

excellent behavior of the drive both in steady state and during transients. In particular, the torque response is fast and the ux regulation is accurate, closely reproducing the performance exhibited by a traditional DTC scheme. The plots of Figs. 8(d) and 9(d), in turn, demonstrate that the reconstruction algorithm is effective in tracking the stator current accurately both at high speed and low speed. The adjustment stage makes the reconstruction of the stator currents somewhat robust against a mismatch in the model parameters because it exerts a compensating action for the deviation arising in the prediction stage. This feature has been veried by carrying out the preceding tests with a mismatch of 30% in the value of Ls employed to predict the currents. The relevant plot of current and that of the respective reconstructed value are given in Fig. 10(a) and (b), respectively, at 75% and 10% of the rated motor speed. Comparison of the outcomes with those in Figs. 8(d) and 9(d) is evidence of the robustness of the reconstruction algorithm.

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R EFERENCES
[1] I. Takahashi and T. Noguchi, A new quick-response and high-efciency control strategy of an induction motor, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. IA-22, no. 5, pp. 820827, Sep./Oct. 1986. [2] M. Depenbrok, Direct self-control (DSC) of inverter-fed induction machine, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 420429, Oct. 1988. [3] G. Buja and M. Kazmierkowski, Direct torque control of PWM inverterfed AC motorsA survey, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 744757, Aug. 2004. [4] T. C. Green and B. W. Williams, Derivation of motor line-current waveforms from the DC-link current of an inverter, Proc. Inst. Electr. Eng., vol. 136, no. 4, pt. B, pp. 196204, Jul. 1989. [5] F. Petruzziello, G. Joos, and P. D. Ziogas, Some implementation aspects of line current reconstruction in three-phase PWM inverter, in Proc. IEEE IECON, 1990, pp. 11491154. [6] J. F. Moynihan, R. C. Kavanagh, M. G. Egan, and J. M. D. Murphy, Indirect phase current detection for eld oriented control of a permanent magnet synchronous motor drive, in Proc. EPE, 1991, pp. 641646. [7] W. C. Lee, T. K. Lee, and D. S. Hyun, Comparison of single-sensor current control in the DC link for three-phase voltage-source PWM converters, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 491505, Jun. 2001. [8] T. G. Habetler and D. M. Divan, Control strategies for direct torque control using discrete pulse modulation, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 893901, Sep./Oct. 1991. [9] M. Bertoluzzo, G. Buja, and R. Menis, Analytical formulation of the direct control of induction motor drives, in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Ind. Electron., 1999, pp. 1420.

Fig. 10. Experimental results with Ls mismatch.

VI. C ONCLUSION This paper has presented a novel DTC scheme for IM drives, based on the use of a single sensor of current inserted in the inverter dc link. The scheme reconstructs the stator currents needed to estimate the stator ux magnitude and the motor torque, by means of an algorithm that at rst predicts the currents of the phases and then adjusts them by taking advantage of the sensed dc-link current. Prediction is carried out by means of a suitable model of the motor, whereas adjustment is operated by setting the current of the stator phase in series with the dc link at the sensed value and by altering the predicted values of current of the other two phases by half the detected deviation in the current of the dc-link in-series phase. The performance of a DTC IM drive arranged with the novel scheme has been then experimented. The results have shown the excellent performance of the drive, nearly identical to that achievable with the traditional DTC scheme. On the other hand, the novel scheme requires an additional computation burden and the knowledge of the stator transient inductance. As proven in this paper, the latter inconvenience is eased by the robustness of the reconstruction algorithm that allows the usage of a rough estimate of the inductance. A PPENDIX The data on the experimental rig are as follows. DTC Torque controller hysteresis band: 5% of the rated torque; ux controller hysteresis band: 2% of the rated stator ux; sampling interval: 50 s. IM Rated power: 3 kW; line-to-line voltage: 380 V; phase current: 7.3 A; frequency: 50 Hz; speed: 1410 r/min; power factor: 0.82; efciency: 76%; pole pairs: 2; stator resistance: 1.95 ; rotor resistance: 1.66 ; total leakage inductance: 21 mH; stator inductance: 243 mH; rotor inductance: 244 mH; magnetizing inductance: 233 mH. Inverter Voltage source inverter supplied by a 530-V dc supply. The switching frequency of the inverter varies from 1.5 to 3 kHz in the operation range. DSP board TMS320F240 DSP evaluation module. Signal conditioner Antialiasing lters and circuits for adapting the signal level.

Manuele Bertoluzzo received the M.S. degree in electronic engineering and the Ph.D. degree in industrial electronics and computer science from the University of Padova, Padova, Italy, in 1993 and 1997, respectively. From 1998 to 2000, he was a member of the research and development division of an electrical drive factory. In 2000, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Padova, as a Researcher in the Scientic Disciplines Group and carried out research in the elds of electric converters, machines, and drives. He is currently involved in the analysis and design of control systems and communication networks for power electronics and automotive systems.

Giuseppe Buja (M78SM84F95) received the Laurea degree in electronic engineering (with honors) from the University of Padova, Padova, Italy, in 1970. Upon graduation, he joined the Engineering Faculty of the University of Padova. Since 1986, he has been a Full Professor of power electronics, rst at the University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy, and then at the University of Padova. He has carried out research in the elds of static converters, electric drives, and industrial automation. He has authored or coauthored more than 150 papers published in refereed journals and international conference proceedings. He has started the Laboratory of Electric Drives at the University of Trieste and the Laboratory of Industrial Automation at the University of Padova, the latter of which he is currently the Head. He has directed several research projects granted by the university and by private companies. He has served as the Coordinator of the Ph.D. course in electrical engineering at the University of Padova. Prof. Buja has served the IEEE in several capacities, including as the General Chairman of the 20th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IEEE IECON94) and as an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS. He was a cofounder of the International Symposium on Diagnostics for Electric Machines, Power Electronics and Drives (SDEMPED). Currently, he is a Senior Member of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, a Voted Member of the Executive Council of the Association on Power Electronics and Motion Control (PEMC), and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Electrical Engineering in Transportation.

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Roberto Menis (S76M92) was born in Osoppo, Udine, Italy. He received the Laurea degree in electronic engineering from the University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy, in 1982. From 1982 to 1984, he was a member of the technical staff of an aeronautic industrial company. In 1984, he joined the Department of Electrotechnics, Electronics, and Computer Science, University of Trieste, where he is currently an Associate Professor of electric drives and the Head of the Electric Drives Laboratory. His research interests are in the eld of electric machines and drives, which include modeling and identication of ac machines, control of synchronous generators for diesel-alternator groups, control of ac and direct current motors, and industry applications of the drives.