186 Session 7 Reluctance Resolvers and Position Measurement

7.1 Resolver Principles

The absolute position of the rotor is an indispensable input value for the control system,
especially for the coordinate transformations. One important requirement is that the position
must be available instantaneously after turn-on. The measurement must be precise and Quick summary:
reliable, and the sensor must allow for comprehensive self-diagnostics and fault detection. Resolvers determine the
There are many different principles available, e.g. based on optical or magnetic sensing of rotor position by
reference tracks mounted on the rotating parts. measuring a magnetic
The resolver is based on the position dependent detection of a magnetic field which is AC flux with two
generated by an electrically excited coil on the rotor. orthogonally arranged
windings.

7.1.1 Rotor Excited Resolver

n the
reluctance resolver used in our application, therefore we have a look at this type of resolver
first.
Some typical samples are shown in Figure 7.1. Those resolvers are usually mounted on the
backside of servo drive synchronous motors in industrial applications.

Figure 7.1: Typical rotor excited resolvers (Tamagawa Seiki)

The operating principle of the resolver is shown step by step in Figure 7.2:

1. The excitation voltage (typically an AC voltage <10V and around 10kHz) is

applied to the stator excitation coil (R1-R2).
2. This excitation coil is concentrically wound around the shaft to form the primary

3. On the secondary side of this transformer, another concentrically wound coil on the
rotor will pick up this transformed voltage and cause a current iR to flow on the
rotor, with excitation frequency (10kHz).
4. The secondary side of the rotary transformer is connected to the rotor excitation
winding, where the rotor current produces a position-dependent rotor flux R .
187 Session 7 Reluctance Resolvers and Position Measurement

5. This rotor flux is picked up by two perpendicular stator coils (S1-S3 and S2-S4).
The frequency of the voltage induced in these two pick-up windings is again the
excitation frequency (10kHz), but its amplitude is dependent on the position angle
R of the resolver rotor, as indicated in the figure.
6. As a result, we finally get two modulated 10kHz voltage signals where the envelope
of the signals reflects the cosine and the sine of the position. The combination of
this cosine and the sine envelopes allows a distinct calculation of R .

2. 3. 4. 5.
Stator Rotor Stator
S1 6.
R
R1 iR u S1 S3
R

1. u R1 R2 S3
S2

R2
uS 2 S4

S4
Rotary Rotor
Transformer Excitation
(sec. side) Coil
Rotary
Transformer Pick-up
(pri. side) Windings

Figure 7.2: Principle of a rotor excited resolver

7.1.2 Reluctance Resolver

Although the rotor excited resolver already is a very robust and well-proven sensor type, its
disadvantage is that it still needs the winding arrangement on the rotor which requires a
certain rotor length (thickness of the sensor) and limits the possible diameter of the rotor
and the permissible speed.
The reluctance resolver avoids this disadvantage by positioning the excitation and the
pick-up windings both on the stator side and using only a passive ferromagnetic steel plate
as its rotor. The ferromagnetic rotor has a carefully designed outer contour which modulates
the magnetic coupling from the excitation winding to the pick-up winding.
188 Session 7 Reluctance Resolvers and Position Measurement

With this approach, the sensor (and especially its rotor) is fairly thin and the diameter of the
sensor can be adapted to the outer diameter of the IPMSM to give room for the torque
converter and the mechanical coupling parts of the transmission.

Figure 7.3: Small diameter sample reluctance resolvers (Tamagawa Seiki)

The simplified principle of the variable magnetic coupling is illustrated in a stretched-out

representation in Figure 7.4 for three different positions. The thickness of the red flux line
represents the magnetic conductance from the excitation winding (middle tooth) to two
parts of the cosine pick-up winding (left and right teeth). These windings are connected in
series with inverse sense of winding, such that the difference of the magnetic conductance
from the excitation to the pick-up side determines the amplitude of the measured voltage
uS 1 S 3 .
In the middle position (b), the output voltage of the pick-up winding is zero because of the
magnetic symmetry.
Similar considerations apply for the cosine pick-up winding uS 2 S 4 , with a 90° phase shift.
The arrangement of the winding on the stator teeth and the design of the rotor contour is the
main technical know-how of the sensor manufacturer.
189 Session 7 Reluctance Resolvers and Position Measurement

Rotor
(a)

Stator

uS1 S3 uR1 R2

(b)

uS1 S3 0 u R1 R2

(c)

uS1 S3 u R1 R2

Figure 7.4: Stretched-out principle of a reluctance resolver (shown for one excitation
winding and the cosine pick-up winding at three positions)

The waveforms on the input and output side of the resolver are almost the same as for the
rotor excited resolver. For constant rotor speed, the resulting input and output signals are
shown in Figure 7.5.
190 Session 7 Reluctance Resolvers and Position Measurement

R
R1 S1

u R1 R2 uS1 S3

R2 S3
S2 uS 2 S4
S4

u R1 R 2 5
V
0

-5
cos R
1
0 sin R
-1

uS1 S 3 1
V 0

-1 Quick summary:
The output signals of the
uS 2 S 4 reluctance resolver are
1
V modulated cosine and
0 sine waveforms.
-1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
t (ms)

Figure 7.5: Symbolic representation and in-/output signals of a reluctance resolver

during one revolution (phase shift neglected)

Mathematically, the voltage across the excitation windings is described as

uR1 R2 2U EXC sin t R (7.1)

where U EXC defines the rms value of the excitation voltage. The output voltages induced
in the pick-up windings are given as
u S1 S3 rtr 2U EXC sin t cos R
, (7.2)
uS 2 S4 rtr 2U EXC sin t sin R

where rtr is the transformation ratio from the excitation winding to the pick-up winding.
The phase shift between the excitation voltage and the pick-up winding voltage is described
by R .
191 Session 7 Reluctance Resolvers and Position Measurement

7.2 Signal Evaluation and Processing

7.2.1 Integrated Evaluation Circuits (R/D Converters)

The sine and cosine signals from the resolver need to be demodulated and converted into Quick summary:
digital position information. Resolver output signals
Tamagawa as well as other manufacturers like Analog Devices offer dedicated integrated are often evaluated with
circuits for resolver evaluation, often called R/D ( -to-digital) converters. Although integrated R/D converter
they are not used in the GEN3 inverter, it is worth looking at such circuits to understand ICs which directly
how resolver signals can be converted into a digital position word. The GEN3 inverter uses compute digital position
an evaluation algorithm implemented in an FPGA by the inverter supplier. However, the information.
principle is likely to be similar.

The basic idea of the R/D circuit shown as a block diagram in Figure 7.6 (Tamagawa
AU6805) is to implement a tracking loop which computes an estimated angle R# :

#
sin t sin sin t sin R R
R
#
R

sin t cos R

Figure 7.6: Block diagram of the Tamagawa AU6805 R/D converter chip (image
modified from Tamagawa Seiki)

The input signals from the resolver

u S1 S3 rtr 2U EXC sin t cos R
((7.2))
uS 2 S4 rtr 2U EXC sin t sin R

are multiplied with the sine and the cosine of this estimated angle to form
192 Session 7 Reluctance Resolvers and Position Measurement

#
rtr 2U EXC sin t sin R cos R
. (7.3)
#
rtr 2U EXC sin t cos R sin R

The difference of these two signals represents a control error

# #
rtr 2U EXC sin t sin R cos R cos R sin R
. (7.4)
#
rtr 2U EXC sin t sin R R

After demodulation (elimination of sin t ), the sine of the control error can be
approximated with
# #
rtr 2U EXC sin R R rtr 2U EXC R R (7.5)
#
for small values of R R . This control error is fed into a digital integrator (counter) which
increases or decreases the estimated angle R# , trying to eliminate the control error R #
R
until the estimated angle R agrees with the input resolver angle R . The digital value R#
#

can now be transmitted to the microcontroller via a parallel interface. In this case for the
Tamagawa example, the digital position output has a resolution of 12 bits. The dynamic
behavior (i.e. the bandwidth) of the tracking loop is determined by the gain factor in the
error path.

This basic evaluation loop is surrounded by a number of additional functions, such as

the excitation waveform generator
self-diagnostics and error detection
serial interface for configuration and data output
analog monitoring outputs.

7.2.2 Phase-Locked Loop and Speed Calculation

After the computation of the digital raw position signal by the R/D converter we need two
additional processing steps within the microcontroller:
Quick summary:
filtering of the position information to suppress noise
The phase-locked loop
calculation of the speed from the position information (PLL) is a smart way to
Using a standard low-pass filter for noise suppression would cause significant phase shift refine the position signal
and delay in the output signal and is therefore not recommended. and to compute the
Calculating the speed by computing the derivative of the position signal can cause a speed, avoiding most
disadvantages of low-
tremendous amount of noise in the speed signal and is therefore also not reasonable.
pass filters.
A suitable way to overcome both problems is to use a phase-locked loop (PLL) as shown
in Figure 7.7. This PLL is basically a control loop which compares an artificially computed
position R, PLL with the original value R and uses this difference as an input for a PI-
controller. As a result, the PLL avoids a phase error for constant speed and as a side effect
it computes the speed PLL at the output of its controller.
193 Session 7 Reluctance Resolvers and Position Measurement

PI-Controller Plant Model (Integrator)

GC ( s) G ( s)
PLL
K p , PLL
R + + PLL 1 R , PLL

+ s
1 PLL , filt
R ,PLL K i , PLL
s

Figure 7.7: Phase-locked loop (PLL) for position filtering and speed computation

The transfer function of the closed PLL loop is given as

sTi , PLL 1 1
K p, PLL
R , PLL GC G sTi , PLL s
GCL, PLL ( s ) , (7.6)
R 1 GC G sTi , PLL 1 1
1 K p, PLL
sTi , PLL s

with the transfer function of the PI controller

1 sTi, PLL 1
GC (s ) K p,PLL Ki ,PLL K p,PLL (7.7)
s sTi, PLL
and
K p, PLL
Ti, PLL . (7.8)
Ki, PLL

Rearranging (7.6) delivers a second-order transfer function

1 sTi , PLL
GCL , PLL ( s) .
2 Ti , PLL (7.9)
1 sTi , PLL s
K p, PLL

The characteristics of an imaginary position step response can be tuned by selecting the
poles of this transfer function. In a normalized form
194 Session 7 Reluctance Resolvers and Position Measurement

s
1 2D
0
GCL, PLL ( s ) 2
, (7.10)
s s
1 2D
0 0

the desired damping D and the characteristic angular frequency 0 can be expressed as
functions of the controller gains:
K p, PLL GEN3 software:
D and 0 Ki , PLL . (7.11)
2 Ki , PLL The software uses
Ki , PLL 300000 and
We can now determine these PLL controller gains K p , PLL 1000 as
standard values. This
2 implies D 0.9 and
Ki ,PLL 0 and K p,PLL 2D 0 . (7.12)
0 550s 1 .
It is recommendable to select the damping around D 1 to avoid an overshoot in the step
response and to select the characteristic angular frequency low enough to eliminate noise
on the input signal.

By having a look at the control error

Ti , PLL
s2
K p, PLL
GE ,PLL ( s ) 1 GCL, PLL (7.13)
Ti , PLL
1 sTi , PLL s2
K p, PLL

we can investigate the remaining position error under different conditions:

The PLL will completely eliminate the steady state control error for a step in the
position (although it is obvious that a position step will never occur in practice):

0 0
lim s GE ,PLL (s) 0 , with the position step function (7.14)
s 0 s s

The PLL will completely eliminate position errors for constant speed, i.e. for a
linearly increasing position. This means that the phase lag which is typical for low-
pass filters can completely be avoided:
&0 &0
lim s GE ,PLL ( s) 2
0 , with the position ramp function (7.15)
s 0 s s
It will not completely eliminate errors for speed ramps, i.e. a quadratic position
function. During speed ramps, the remaining error will be
&
&0 &
&0
lim s GE ,PLL ( s) 3
Ki, PLL , with the speed ramp function (7.16)
s 0 s s
195 Session 7 Reluctance Resolvers and Position Measurement

Besides acting as a filter for the position signal, the PLL also computes the angular rotor
speed PLL . By definition, the speed is given as the derivative of the position GEN3 software:
( s The GEN3 software uses
PLL R, PLL ), hence the rotor speed is seen at the output of the PLL controller.
the angular speed
However, this speed signal can be quite noisy because of the direct feed through of the PLL, filt from the
position error R R , PLL K p , PLL . To overcome this problem, we can simply use the
integral part of the
controller instead of
integrator output of the PLL controller instead, as indicated in Figure 7.7 (blue dashed line). PLL . In steady state,
The respective transfer function is this does not make any
difference. This way, the
speed is less sensitive to
1 noise on the input signal
PLL , filt PLL, filt
, R.
s Ti ,PLL (7.17)
R
1 sTi ,PLL s2
K p ,PLL

which represents a second order low-pass filter, where the characteristic angular frequency
and the damping have already been discussed in eqs. (7.11).