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Parameter Identification of PMSM for EPS Based 2014-01-0271

on an Improved MRAS Method Published 04/01/2014

Hu Zhang, JianWei Zhang, and Konghui Guo

Jilin Univ.

CITATION: Zhang, H., Zhang, J., and Guo, K., "Parameter Identification of PMSM for EPS Based on an Improved MRAS
Method," SAE Technical Paper 2014-01-0271, 2014, doi:10.4271/2014-01-0271.

Copyright © 2014 SAE International

Abstract get as much as possible motor operating information to make

redundant design and fault diagnosis. In [2], the authors
Whether high-precision torque control or motor condition
proposed a method to estimate motor current with the voltage
monitoring need accurate motor parameters. For the three
and speed of motor; a method to estimate the flux linkage
parameters of surface-mounted permanent magnet
position and the motor speed by detecting back EMF was
synchronous motor (SPMSM), the voltage equation is rank-
proposed in [3]. However, these methods are based on precise
deficient. To solve this problem, some scholars proposed
motor parameters. In addition, as an important human
methods that build full rank equations with signal injection, but
interface, EPS requires servo system composed of the drive
this will produce motor torque ripple, which is not suitable for
control unit and motor with high tracking precision, fast tracking
application to the EPS. Therefore, this paper proposes a
ability and good robustness. In order to achieve these
method based on MRAS to identify motor parameters step by
performances, some scholars have proposed many advanced
step. The proposed two steps identification method can make
control strategies, most of which are also based on accurate
the reference model full rank in every step, but the total
motor parameters. During the operation of PMSM, the motor
decoupling between parameters identification processes
parameters may change due to loading, aging and
cannot be realized for the assumption that the prior step result
environmental conditions. Therefore, many scholars made a lot
is the real value. It was found in experiment that this effect
of research on online identification of motor parameters, and
varies with the motor operating conditions. Therefore, this
many approaches were proposed, such as RLS [4], EKF [5],
paper analyzes the sensitivity of the motor parameters and
MRAS [6], etc. When identifying parameters with the above
proposes a method to improve the accuracy of identification
methods, the dq-axis voltage equation of PMSM must be used.
results by changing the weight of identification results
But, if the motor stator resistance, stator inductance and
according to the operating conditions. The performance of the
permanent magnet flux are identified at the same time, the
proposed method was verified through experiment, and the
dq-axis voltage equation of PMSM is rank-deficient. According
accuracy of the estimated results is improved without
to the identification theory, it is difficult to ensure that the
interfering with the normal operation of the motor.
identification results based on a rank-deficient reference
converge to the real value. In[7,8], the authors proposed that
Introduction construct full rank equations by signal injection method, but the
periodic signal injection can result in the fluctuations of the
In recent years, permanent magnet synchronous motor is
motor output torque. The motor torque ripple may cause the
gradually being applied to the electric power steering system
steering wheel ripple and affect the driver's feeling.
(EPS), due to its high energy density, high torque inertia ratio
and compact design, etc. As there are very stringent security
To overcome these difficulties, this paper analyzes the rank-
requirements for the EPS, the redundancy and reliability must
deficient problem of SPMSM model, and proposes a method to
be taken into account in the design process. In addition, the
identify the motor parameters based on MRAS step by step,
cost is another important factor that must be taken into
that is, two steps are carried out for identification of motor
consideration, because In the process of mass production,
resistance, inductance and flux linkage. Since motor reference
even a slight increase in the cost of a single system, will result
models are full rank at each step of the identification process,
in a substantial increase in the total cost. In order to take the
which can ensure convergence of identification results.
security of the system and the low-cost into account at the
However, this method is based on the assumption that the
same time, designers must use sensors as few as possible to
identification result of prior step is real value. For example, in
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the identification of flux linkage, only if the identification value
of resistance is true, it can be ensured that the flux linkage
converges to the real value. In the process of identification,
signal noise and error are inevitable, and they will affect the
accuracy of the identification result. What is more important is
that, a parameter identification error will affect the results of
other parameter identification results, or even cause ill-
convergence. It was found in experiment that this effect varies
with the operating conditions of the motor. To solve this
problem, firstly, the sensitivity of the estimated results to the
acquisition error of signals and identification error of the other
parameters is analyzed in this paper. Then the concept of
weighting function is introduced, which is to suppress the
impact of sampling noise and other motor parameters precision
by modifying weight of parameters identification result
dynamically accordance to the motor operating condition. And
thereby the identification accuracy of the results is improved. At
last, the effectiveness of the proposed methods is verified
through an experiment.
Analysis of Rank-Deficient Problem of
PMSM Model
Assuming that neglect the cross-coupling, magnetic saturation,
iron losses, structural asymmetry, magnet eddy current loss
and harmonics in the descriptive functions of windings, the
dq-axis equations of the SPMSM are as follows:
(1)
Where ud uq id and iq are the stator voltage and current of
dq-axis; ω is the rotor electrical angular velocity; R L and ψf
are the stator resistance, the stator inductance and the rotor
flux linkage, respectively.
For SPMSM, under id = 0 control, equation (1) can be further
simplified to:
(2a),(2b)
Parameters, such as R, L and ψf are regarded as unknown
parameters to be identified. Other variables, such as ud, uq, id,
iq and ω, are measured. Since there are three parameters in
two equations, both equations (1) and equations (2) are
rank-deficient to identify the three motor parameters. Although
the stator inductance can be identified by equation (2a), the
winding resistance and the rotor flux linkage cannot be
estimated at the same time by the equation (2b), due to the
equation (2b) is rank-deficient for two unknown parameters.
Due to there are infinite numbers of solutions for rank-deficient
equation, if the convergence rate of the algorithms is not
appropriately controlled or different initial values, the
identification results will be ill-convergence[9].
Two Steps Identification Method
In this section, a method to take steps to estimate the three
parameters of SPMSM under id=0 control will be proposed to
solve the aforementioned problem that is associated with the
rank-deficient model of SPMSM.
As is shown in Eq. (2a), the d-axis voltage equation of SPMSM
is full rank for the stator inductance under id = 0 control, so the
stator inductance can be identified independently. But Eq. (2b)
is rank-deficient for the stator resistance and the flux linkage
obviously. Because the motor parameters change slowly during
the identification process, it can be considered being constant.
So we can identify one parameter between the stator resistance
and flux linkage in every step using the q-axis voltage equation,
assuming that the other parameter is the real value. This
method can ensure that the reference model used for
identification in every step is full rank.
Identification of Stator Inductance
As shown in Eq. (2a), d-axis voltage equation of SPMSM is ud
= −ωLiq under id = 0 control. By collecting the motor three-
phase PWM duty cycle and bus voltage, the three-phase
voltage can be obtained and used to get the voltage of d-axis
and q-axis through coordinate transformation. The angular
velocity ω can be obtained by differentiating the position signal
of the motor, and the current of d-axis and q-axis can be
obtained from Hall element. According to the analysis above, in
the Eq. (2a) only the inductance L is the unknown parameter
and the stator inductance can be calculated by the Eq. (3).
(3)
In the process of identification, the signal noise and error is
inevitable, and the d-axis current will fluctuate around zero in
dynamic conditions, so in this paper, the signals collected and
the stator inductance identified by Eq. (3) were filtered with
low-pass filter.
Identification of the Flux Linkage and Stator
Resistance Based on MRAS
In this section, a method to identify the flux linkage and
resistance based on MRAS is proposed, the structure diagram
of MRAS system is shown in Figure1.If the outputs of the
SPMSM and the adjustable model are different, which
illustrated that the parameters in two different models are
different, and the adaptive law adjust the parameters of the
adjustable model according to the output error until the two
outputs parameter become same. At this time, the parameters
of the adjustable model are considered to be consistent with
the actual motor parameters.
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Firstly, assuming that the initial value or the identification result The error dynamic equation can be expressed as Eq. (6) by
in prior step of R stator resistance is the real value, then the subtracting Eq. (4) from Eq. (5)
identified stator inductance can be used to identify the flux
linkage ψf. The state equation of q-axis obtained from voltage
equation of SPMSM is as follows: (6)

Where , A=−R/L,

The error of linear compensator is introduced:

(4)

The adjustable motor model can be expressed as follows:

(7)

In order to satisfy the stability of the adaptive system, two rules

should be satisfied simultaneously: firstly, the linear constant
(5) feed-forward module is strictly positive real; secondly, the
nonlinear feedback block should satisfy the Popov's integral
Where uq is the SPMSM and adjustable model inputs, iq and inequality [10].
are the output of the SPMSM and the adjustable model
respectively, and is parameter of the adjustable model. The transfer function of linear constant feed-forward module is
as follow:

(8)

By the kalman-yakubovich lemma, as long as the linear

compensator D satisfies this condition: D = k (k> 0), it can be
guaranteed that the linear constant feed-forward module is
strictly positive real. For simplicity this paper take k = 1.

The adaptive law of this system can be defined according to

Popov's Inequality as follows:

(9)

For any value which is t1 ≥ 0, γ2, is a limited positive constant

Figure 1. The structure diagram of MRAS system
independent of t1. According to the conventional adaptive rule,
Popov's hyper-stability theory is employed in this paper to simple adaptive PI rules are expressed as follows:
ensure the unknown parameters can converge asymptotically
to real value. The control system discussed by Popov's
hyper-stability theory is a nonlinear feedback system that is
composed of linear constant forward loop and nonlinear (10)
time-varying feedback loop. The structure diagram is shown in
Figure 2. The Eq. (9) is substituted into Eq. (10):

(11)

By and we
know: when G(t) = ωe/L, Popov inequality (12) is set up.
Therefore the flux linkage adaptive law can be expressed as
follow:

Figure 2. The structure diagram of nonlinear feedback system

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(12)
Similarly, assuming that the initial value or the identification
result in prior step of ψf is the real value, then the identified
stator inductance can be used to identify the resistance R. Its
adaptive law is as follows:
(13)
Generally, the motor parameters are changed in a certain
range. To ensure the process of identification to converge as
soon as possible, the identified parameters are always limited
to their maximum and minimum values:
(14)
Sensitivity Analysis of the Parameters
The above two steps identification method can make the
reference model full rank in every step under an assumption that
the prior step results are true values. However, In the process of
identification, the values between the estimated results and the
true one have a certain deviation suffer from the noises and
errors of signals, what's worse is that an identification result
error will affect another parameter identification results.
Therefore, the sensitivity of the motor parameters to the signal
noise and error of the other estimated results will be analyzed in
the following section.
Firstly, the sensitivity of resistance to the error and noise of
each sampling signal and the error of estimated flux linkage is
analyzed.
The adjustable model can be expressed as:
(15)
In steady state, assuming that , the Eq. (15) can be
simplified into:
(16)
In steady state, the reference model (2b) can be simplified into
(17)
The partial derivative of Eq. (15) with respect to the estimated
result of the resistance is as follows:
(18)
When analyzing the impact of the errors and noise of q-axis
voltage to the identification result of the resistance, let
, ,
then Eq. (18) can be simplified as
follows:
(19)
When analyzing the impact of the errors and noise of motor
current to the identification result of resistance, Eq. (18) can be
simplified as follows:
(20)
Similarly, when analyzing the impact of the errors and noise of
motor rotation speed to the identification result of resistance,
Eq. (18) can be simplified as follows:
(21)
When analyzing the impact of the errors of flux linkage to the
estimated resistance, the error equation of estimated
resistance can be expressed as Eq. (22) by subtracting Eq.
(17) from Eq. (16) and assuming that
(22)
The Eq. (19) shows that the effect of the acquisition error of uq
on the estimated resistance will weaken with the q-axis current
increases. The values of resistance and flux linkage are very
small relative to the q-axis current, From Eq. (20) and (21), the
effect of the acquisition error of the q-axis current and the
motor speed on the estimated resistance are negligible.
From Eq. (22), the effect of the estimated error of the flux
linkage on the estimated resistance will Strengthen with the
q-axis current decreases, and with the motor speed increases.
Secondly, the sensitivity of flux linkage to the error and noise of
each sampling signal and the estimated error of resistance is
analyzed.
The partial derivative of Eq. (15) with respect to the estimated
result of the flux linkage is as follows:
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(31)

(23) The Eq. (29) shows that the effect of the acquisition error of uq
on the estimated inductance will weaken with the ωiq
Let , , increases. The value of inductance is very small relative to the
then Eq. (18) can be simplified as q-axis current and the motor speed, From Eq. (30) and (31),
follows: the effect of the acquisition error of the q-axis current and the
motor speed on the estimated inductance are negligible.

From the above analysis, the following conclusions can be

(24)
drawn:
Similarly, we can get:
1. The acquisition error and noise of the current and the motor
speed have little influence on the identification results, but
The acquisition error and noise of the motor voltage has
(25) influence on all the three identification results, and this effect
is relevant with the q-axis current and the motor speed.
2. The estimated results of the winding resistance and flux
(26) linkage are not influenced by the estimated inductance.
3. The estimated errors of the flux linkage and resistance have
The Eq. (22) can also be expressed as: cross effect on each other, and this effect is proportional to
the relationship with iq / ω.

(27)
The Eq. (24) shows that the effect of the acquisition error of uq
on the estimated flux linkage will weaken with the motor speed
increases. The value of resistance and flux linkage are very
small relative to the motor speed, From Eq. (25) and (26), the
effect of the acquisition error of the q-axis current and the
motor speed on the estimated flux linkage are negligible.
In order to weaken the effect of the acquisition error of uq and the
different operating conditions on identification results In the
process of identification, the concept of weight function is
introduced in this paper, and the method that modify the weight
of estimated results according to the motor operating conditions
is proposed, which can effectively suppress the influence of
sampling noise and other identification results on the parameters
to be estimated, so as to improve the identification accuracy.

From Eq. (27), the effect of the estimated error of the resistance Define the weight function of the stator inductance, as shown
on the estimated flux linkage will Strengthen with the q-axis below:
current increases, and weaken with the motor speed increases.

Finally, the sensitivity of inductance to each sampling signal

error and noise is analyzed.

The partial derivative of Eq. (2a) with respect to the estimated

result of the inductance is as follows:
(32)

Where wLk is the weight of estimated inductance increment; σL

= |ωkiqk| is regarded as factors of wLk, which indicate the motor
(28) operating condition; σLmin and σLmax are maximum and
minimum values of σL.
Let ∂ω(t)/∂L(t) = 0, ∂iq(t)/∂L(t) = 0, then the Eq. (28) can be
simplified to:
The estimated inductance can be obtained from Eq. (33).

(29) (33)

Similarly, we can get: Define the weight function of the stator resistance, as shown
below:

(30)
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(34)

Where wRk is the weight of estimated resistance increment, σR

= |iqk/ωk| is regarded as a factor of wRk, which indicate the
motor operating condition; σRmax and σRmin are maximum and
minimum values of σR;; σiq is the threshold of q-axis current,
which decide whether to identify resistance.

The estimated resistance can be obtained from Eq. (35).

(35)
Figure 3. The test bench and controller based DSP.
Define the weight function of the stator resistance, as shown
below: Table.1. The nominal parameters of SPMSM

(36)

Where wψfk is the weight of estimated flux linkage increment;

σψf =|ωk / iqk| is regarded as a factor of wψfk, which indicate the
motor operating condition; σψfmax and σψfmin are maximum and
minimum values of σψf; σω is the threshold of motor speed,
which decide whether to identify flux linkage.

The estimated flux linkage can be obtained from Eq. (37).

(37)

Experiment
To show the validity of the proposed methods, the test bench
and the controller based DSP (TMS320F28335) are employed
as shown in Figure 3. The nominal parameter of SPMSM
employed in this paper is shown in Table.1.

Firstly, the two steps identification method is employed to Figure 4(a). The estimated value by two steps identification method
estimate the motor parameters; under an operating condition and nominal value of Flux linkage and resistance.
that the speed of motor is 1000r/min and the load torque is
3Nm. The identification results of the winding resistance and
flux linkage are shown in Figure 4(a), while the identification
result of inductance is shown in Figure 4(b). From Figure4, the
identified results can converge to the true value by the two
steps identification method under certain operating condition.
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true value under three different operating conditions, under

condition2 and condition3, the estimated inductance is smaller
than the nominal value because of the magnetic saturation.

Figure 4(b). The estimated value by two steps identification method

and nominal value of inductance.
Figure 5. The estimated value by two step identification method and
Secondly, the two steps identification method is employed to nominal value of Flux linkage and resistance at different operating
estimate the motor parameters, under two different operating condition.
conditions, Condition1: the motor speed is 1000 r/min and no
load; Condition2: the motor speed is 100r/min and the load
torque is 3.5Nm. The estimated parameters have the same
initial value and two experiments are carried out at room
temperature. The values of winding resistance and flux linkage
should be nearly the same under the two operating conditions
for the nearly same temperature and initial values. But, as is
shown in Figure 4, the resistance and flux linkage converge to
different values under different operating conditions. The
reason of the ill-convergence is that the proposed two steps
identification method can make the reference model full rank in
every step, but the total decoupling between two parameter
identification processes cannot be realized for the assumption
that the prior step result is true. In the process of identification,
The values between the estimated results and the true one Figure 6(a). The estimated value by the proposed method and nominal
have a certain deviation suffer from the noises and errors of value of Flux linkage and resistance at different operating conditions.
signals, what's worse is that an identification result error will
affect another parameter identification results, so the estimated
results can't converge to the true value of parameters finally. In
addition, as is shown in Figure 5, the flux linkage is insensitive
to the error of estimated resistance and signal noise under
operating condition1, so the estimated value of the flux linkage
has a relatively accurate result, while the error of the estimated
value of resistance is relatively big. Whereas, the identification
result of the resistance is more accurate under the condition 2.

Finally, The proposed method that modify the weight of

estimated results according to the motor operating conditions
is employed to identify the parameters under three different
operating conditions, Condition1: the motor speed is 1000 r/
min and no load; Condition2: the motor speed is 1000 r/min Figure 6(b). The estimated value by the proposed method and nominal
and the load torque is 3.5Nm; Condition3: the motor speed is value of inductance at different operating conditions.
100r/min and the load torque is 3.5Nm. The identification
results of the winding resistance and flux linkage are shown in
Figure 6(a), while the identification result of inductance is
Conclusion
shown in Figure 6(b). From Figure 6, the identified results of In this paper, the improved parameter identification method of
the winding resistance and flux linkage can converge to the PMSM for EPS was proposed. The knowledge is summarized
as follows:
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1. The winding resistance, inductance and rotor flux linkage 7. Sebastian, Ebersberger, Bernhard, Piepenbreier,
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cannot be realized for the assumption that the prior step “Real time estimation of parameters for controlling and
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3. The strength of coupling relationship between parameters, International Electric Machines and Drives Conf., Miami,
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motor operating conditions. 9. Kan, Liu, Qiao, Zhang, et al. “Online Multiparameter
4. The method that modify the weight of estimated results Estimation of Nonsalient-Pole PM Synchronous Machines
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coupling relationship between parameters largely, and the on Industrial Electronics, 58(5): 1776-1788, May, 2011,
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