BLDC Motor

BLDC Motor Control Algorithm for Low-Cost
Industrial Applications
Namhun Kim Hamid A. Toliyat Issa M. Panahi Min-Huei Kim
IEEE, Member IEEE, Senior Member IEEE, Member IEEE, Senior Member
Department of Electrical & Computer Eng. Department of Electrical Eng. Department of Electrical Eng.
Texas A&M University University of Texas at Dallas Yeungnam College of Sec. & Tech.
College Station, TX 77843-3128 Richardson, TX 75080 Daegu City, Korea
E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] E-mail:[email protected]
Abstract - Electrical motors are an integral part of inefficient noisy motor types and the mechanical components
industrial plants with no less than 5 billion motors built with that of the more efficient brushless motors and the digital
word wide every year. The demand for low-cost brushless dc electronics/microcontrollers in home appliances and hand-held
(BLDC) motors have increased in industrial applications. power tools (with cord or cordless) would still require
This paper presents a BLDC motor control algorithm for concentrated technical support and marketing effort. Reference
low-cost motor drive applications using general purpose
microcontrollers which have only one on-chip timer. The designs, comparative cost analysis, and application notes for
papere describes how to realize pulse width modulation specific motor control end equipment will provide design
(PWM) signals with general input/output (1/0) ports to engineers with the benefits of the microcontroller-based
control a three-phase permanent magnet brushless dc motor systems shortening learning curve and their design efforts.
using the timer interrupt on MSP430F1232. A motor control system can be partitioned into 4 units:
supply line interface, digital processor, motor and sensors,
Keywords: BLDC motor, PWM, Industrial application, power converter or drive unit. Electric power is supplied to the
MSP430F1232. motor control system via supply line interface in the form of ac
or dc signal. Motors use windings on the stator parts and either
I. INTRODUCTION permanent magnet (PM) or windings on the rotor parts. Stator
Low end applications of motor control can be found windings is either separated or connected to the rotor windings
in diverse line of consumer, medical, and industrial in series or parallel configuration. Mechanical components
products. High efficiency variable speed and variable (brushes) are needed to connect electrical signal to the rotating
torque motor control is only possible using electronic part. In a motor, rotation of rotor and torque generation occur
components and microcontrollers. Low cost is still when the rotor field and stator field are not parallel, and
dominant factor in designing very low-end products using maximum torque is obtained when these fields are orthogonal
motor control. Examples are hand-held power tools and to each other. Motors with stator windings in series with that
home appliances in the market. of the rotor (using brushes) can operate with either ac or dc
Battery powered vacuum cleaner, drill, and electric signals and are known as universal motors. Despite their very
saw units were investigated. In these products, brush dc or poor efficiency and poor operations (speed versus torque/load,
universal motors were used. The torque/speed variation is noise, electric sparks, brush wear-out, size), they are still
handled roughly by switching 2-position gearbox unit widely used in household appliances, power tools, and yard
connected to motor shaft. That is, low cost design has tools.
been achieved by transferring the cost of electronic drives The brushless dc motor (BLDC) motor has been used in
into the motor type and mechanical parts (gearbox) various industrial applications and has increased demand in
sacrificing efficiency and actual performance of the diverse fields because of its high efficiency, simple control
product for the end user applications. Battery powered compared with ac motors, low EMI, and high reliability due to
tools could only operate at their nominal speed/torque for absent of brushes. Most three-phase motors, including BLDC
a short period of time before recharging the battery motor need at least six PWM channels for inverter power
became necessary. As in the case of power drill and saw, devices such as IGBTs and MOSFETs. In order to meet these
small increase of the torque reduced the rotational speed requirements, generally a special-purpose processor or a
of the motor-controlled system. It is also interesting to programmable logic device (PLD) or drive device to generate
note that the price of the battery charger is quite control signal is necessary. Using special purpose processor or
comparable with the price of the final product. device for BLDC motor drive presents several advantages such
Digital electronic control of motors would offer as small drive size and less development time. However, these
much higher efficiency and better power usage (longer processors are more expensive than the general purpose
operating period for the battery) at competitive cost. processors and eventually will increase the cost of BLDC
Despite all the obvious facts, replacing the cost of motor drive system.
1-4244-0714-1/07/$20.00 C 2007 IEEE. 1400

Since the main flux of BLDC motor is produced by II. BLDC MOTOR
the permanent magnets, this motor has high power density Permanent magnet (PM) motors are synchronous motors
and is capable of operating at high efficiencies while that have permanent magnets mounted on the rotor, and the
having similar torque control performance as a dc motor armature windings located on the stator. PM motors are
[1-2]. Trapezoidal type BLDC motors are generally used categorized into two types. The first type is referred to as PM
for low-cost industrial applications. Therefore, low-cost synchronous motor (PMSM) which has sinusoidal back-EMF
application of BLDC motors are being considered for shown in Fig. (1-a). The other type has a trapezoidal back-EMF
many products, especially its sensorless operation [3]. and is referred to as the brushless dc (BLDC) motor shown in
Sensorless techniques for BLDC motor control with Fig. (1-b) [1].
trapezoidal back-EMFs can be classified into two In BLDC motor drives, the polarity reversal is performed
categories: algebraic equation-based techniques [4-6] and by power transistors switching in synchronization with the
back-EMF voltage sensing techniques [7-10]. The main rotor position. Therefore, the BLDC motor has to use either
idea of using algebraic equations is to calculate the flux internal or external position sensor to detect the actual rotor
linkage from the motor parameters and voltage/current position. Also the rotor position can be estimated without the
measurements. Based on the estimated flux linkage, the need for position sensor. However this paper uses three hall
rotor position can be detected. This method can be sensors to determine the actual rotor position.
operated over a wide speed range, but the motor
parameters need to be known precisely and at least one
current sensor is required. Therefore, the system 50
performance depends on the accuracy of the motor
parameters.
The sensorless techniques that utilize the back-
EMF voltage of the open-phase include the following U-
methods,
1) Terminal voltage sensing, C>
2) Third harmonic back-EMF voltage sensing,
3) Freewheeling diode conduction current sensing.
When a phase is open, the back-EMF voltage
which includes the information of the rotor position can -50&
be measured at the motor terminals. Since the terminal 0 30 60 90 120 150 180 210 240 270 300 330 360
voltage sensing is simple from the hardware point of view, Rotor Position[deg]
this approach is widely used in industry for sensorless ,YU
control of BLDC motors.
The purpose of these sensorless methods is
elimination of the position sensor, which are generally
three hall sensors mounted across from the rotor.
Sensorless techniques need extra computation time and
external circuitry to estimate the back-EMF than the L, o
sensor-based systems. Therefore, sensorless techniques co

demand high performance processors, large program
codes, and large memory. Finally instead of position
sensor, other components are required, so it is very
difficult to decrease the total motor drive cost. -50&0
In order to achieve low-cost BLDC motor drive, a 30 60 90 120 150 180 210 240 270 300 330 360
Rotor position[deg]
general-purpose processor with hall sensors is used
instead of eliminating the position sensor and then uses a (a)Three phase back-EMF of PMSM (b)Three-phase back-EMF of BLDC
special purpose processor. In this paper a general-purpose motor
processor, such as MSP430F1232 which is an ultra low- Fig. 1 The back-EMF of PM motors.
power 16-bit RISC mixed-signal processor from Texas In general, BLDC motor may use either 60 deg or 120
Instruments (TI) is used for battery powered applications. deg commutation intervals. In this paper, the 120 degree
The developed control algorithm is presented and the conduction interval is used. Fig. 2 shows a schematic of BLDC
general purpose digital I/O port is used to generate the motor and the ideal current waveforms versus position. Also,
PWM signals. To verify the proposed algorithm the the position sensors outputs are illustrated. Fig.3 shows the
operation of a three-phase BLDC motor with three hall ideal phase current in each of the motor windings and the three-
sensors under open-loop speed operation is described in phase inverter, respectively. According to Fig. 3 from the first
this paper. interval, phase A will conduct positive dc link current while
phase B will conduct negative dc link current. Phase C will be
left open. As a result, only phase A and B are conducting and
1401
phase C is left silent, which means that only two switches
(A_H and B_L) are active, while the rest (A_L, B_H, C_H, and
C_L) are inactive.
During every PWM cycle to achieve this switching
scheme, the desired duty cycle is imposed by the upper switch
(A_H) of the two involved switches (A_H and B_L) and the
Hall 3 Il lower switch (B_L) is kept on (100% duty cycle). Therefore,
there is no need for dead time to be considered for BLDC
motors. Because whenever the upper switch is turned on, the
lower switch of the same lag always is already off and vice
versa.
III. PROPOSED ALGORITHM

Fig. 4 shows the interrupt block diagram for generating
,N XC the PWM signal using the I/O port which is called asymmetric
B ~~~~~~Hall 2 PMW strategy. To generate these PWM signals, P3.0-P3.5
ports are used because the MSP430F123 micro-controller does
not have enough PWM channels to be directly used with three-
phase motor drives and only has two PWM channels. Timer_A
has 4 mode, up, down, up/down, and continuous mode, and in
Hall 1I
0 90 180 270 330 360 this paper, this is configured in up-mode with MCLK as the
timer clock source, also Timer_A overflow interrupt and
TACCR1 capture/compare interrupt are used to realize exact
Hall 2 PWM signal.
0 90 180 270 360
In order to keep the frequency constant, the CCRO
register has fixed value, which is 200h, and the CCR1 register
Hall 3 has proper value to generate the desired duty ratio. The
0 30 90 180 270 360
software checks the value of CCR1 register to ensure that it
does not exceed the minimum or maximum value and prevents
I_A
150 180
210 2
270
330
1360 it from rolling over.
0 30 90
The software flow chart for the three-phase BLDC motor
with three hall sensors is described in Fig. 5. The initialization
l_B procedure includes the initialization of watchdog timer, digital
o 9D 150 180 270 3
I/O, Timer-A, ADC10, and variables. The main program
consists of the initialization, start of conversion of the dc link
IlC o3 J 1 210 3 current, hall sensor check for rotor position detection, switch
0 30 90 180 270 330 360 signals (SWI, SW2) check for increasing the current reference
or decreasing the current reference and the check for motor
Fig. 2 BLDC motor structure and signals
rotation direction (SW3).
Current in winding A, B, C
A ± 4 4 --o,.
B BLOC motor
C PI
AH BH BH CHX
A_H
B_L
A_H
C_L
,9-CB_H
L
BH
A L
C_H
A L
C_H
B_L
Switchs on in each step
Fig. 3 Inverter configuration of BLDC motor.
1402
All algorithms are developed in assembly language and
OFFFh Timer_A Mode: Up Mode it is using 422 bytes of flash memory. The flash memory
Overflow Interrupt address is from OxEOOO to OxFFFF, the interrupt vector from
CCRo OxFFFF to OxEFEO, and the main code memory fromOxFFFF
to OxEOOO. The developed code is residing in the main code
memory. Therefore, there is no need for connecting extra
memory and peripheral devices.
IV. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION

Fig. 6 shows the block diagram of the BLDC motor
control system used in this paper. MSP430F123 processor
receives feedback signal from the dc link current sensor which
is used to provide current feedback for the closed loop current
control. The rotor position information supplied by the hall
sensors of the BLDC motor is estimated with the 3 external
I/O port. Actual motor current and the direction of rotation
can be changed by the push and toggle switches. Fig. 6
represents the schematic of the BLDC motor drive system. To
t
Current
t
End of
tAt
Current" Current
t
End of
control motor current, a proportional controller is used to
supply proper switching pattern for inverter where three hall
Sampling Conversion Control Sampling Conversion sensors are used. As it is shown in this figure to control the
Fig. 4 Timer_A interrupt block diagram for the PWM signal using the BLDC drive system, only MSP430F123 processor is used and
digital I/O.
external timer devices for PWM generation, memory for
program download are never considered. Fig. 7 shows the
micro-processor used in this paper.
ldc
Fig. 6 The schematic of the BLDC motor drive system.
Fig. 5 Software flowchart.
To generate constant PWM signal, P3.0-P3.5 port

is used as the PWM output port, and Timer_A underflow
interrupt (TAIFG) is served, which is called every
lOOmsec. Also at timer_A underflow interrupt the
specific switching pattern for BLDC motor operation is
generated based on the position sensors signals. To
control the motor current, the dc bus voltage level
applied to the motor using proper PWM duty ratio is
adjusted accordingly. Timer_A CCR1 interrupt is
utilized for regulating this dc bus voltage.
Fig. 7 The MVSP-43UF 12. microcontroller boarO.
1403
Table 1 The comparison of processors for bldc motor drive
Processor Manufacture IKU
price(us$)
ADC Internal Memory PWM
Generation
2.30 On-chip ADC 8k flash,
MSP430F123 TI (Ilpu) (10Obit) 256 RAM Not need
TMS320F2401A TI 3.50
(1.52 pu)
On-chip
(10bit)
ADC 2k RAM On-chip PWM
ST7MC1K2 ST 3.30225
(1.43 pu)
On- chip ADC(10bit) 16k flash,
4k RAM
On- chip PWM
56F8013 Motorola 3.15 On-chip ADC 384-1.5kRAM On-chip PWM

(1.37 pu) (12bit) 8k-60k Flash
Table 1 shows different micro-controllers that are l_-

commonly used in BLDC motor drive applications. As
previously mentioned, MSP430F123 is a general-
purpose processor, which means that it does not have
enough PWM generators for motor control. Using the
developed algorithm for generating the PWM signals
instead of the on-chip PWM generator, it is possible to
reduce the cost by about 37%. All of these micro-
controllers have on-chip ADC and enough internal 3
memory for BLDC motor control algorithm. Therefore,
there is no need for extra components to be used for
motor currents signal sensing.
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Fig. 8 shows the current waveforms, where
Channel 1 illustrates the measured dc link current,
Channel 2 represents the dc link current waveform using Fig. 9 PWM signals and current waveform
the current probe and Channel 4 indicates the phase
current waveform using the current probe. VI. CONCLUSION
Fig. 9 shows the PWM signal, where Channel 1 is In this paper, an efficient algorithm that employs the
the A-upper signal, Channel 2 is the B lower signal and I/O port for PWM signal generation for BLDC motor control
Channel 3 is the C_lower signal using the I/O port and with three hall sensors is proposed. To control bldc motor
A-phase current waveform using a current probe. As it don't need to be considered dead-time for PWM generation,
is seen in Fig.9, the upper leg and the lower leg switches which allow in proposed algorithms using one timer and
are not on simultaneously. Therefore, there is no need general I/O port. The general purpose processor, Texas
for dead-time to be included in this example. Instruments MSP430F123 without any peripheral devices is
121 -A
S.. X
T T
used, to verify the proposed algorithm the control algorithm is
implemented on an experimental set up and several tests have
been performed. It is shown that the proposed low-cost
system has satisfactory performance for industrial applications.
VII. REFERENCES
[1] J.R. Hendershot Jr. and TJE Miller, Design of Brushless
Permanent Magnet Motors, Oxford, 1994.
[2] T.J.E Miller, "Brushless permanent-magnet motor
drives," Power Engineering Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 55-
60, Jan. 1988.
[3] J.P. Johnson, M. Ehsani, and Y. Guzelgunler, "Review
of sensorless methods for brushless DC," in Proc. of
IEEE IAS Annual Meeting, vol.1, pp. 143-150, 1996.
[4] N. Ertugrul and P. Acarnley, "A new algorithm for
sensorless operation of permanent magnet motors,"
IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol. 30, no.
Fig. 8 DC link current and phase current
1404
1, pp. 126-133, Jan./Feb. 1994.
[5] N. Ertugrul and P. Acarnley, "Indirect rotor
position sensing in real time for brushless
permanent magnet motor drives," IEEE
Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 13, no. 4,
pp. 608-616, July 1998.
[6] T.H. Kim and M. Ehsani, "Sensorless control of the
BLDC motors from near-zero to high speeds,"
IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 19,
no. 6, pp. 1635-1645, Nov. 2004.
[7] J.C. Moreira, "Indirect sensing for rotor flux
position of permanent magnet AC motors operating
over a wide speed range," IEEE Transactions on
Industry Applications, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 1394-
1401, Nov./Dec. 1996.
[8] S. Ogasawara and H. Akagi, "An approach to
position sensorless drive for brushless DC motors,"
IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol.
27, no. 5, pp. 928-933, Sept./Oct. 1991.
[9] G.J. Su and J.W. McKeever, "Low-cost sensorless
control of brushless DC motors with improved
speed range," IEEE Transactions on Power
Electronics, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 296-302, Mar. 2004.
[10] J.W. Shao, D. Nolan, M Teissier, and D. Swanson,
"A novel microcontroller-based sensorless
brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive for automotive
fuel pumps," IEEE Transactions on Industry
Applications, vol. 39, no. 6, pp. 1734-1740,
Nov./Dec. 2003.
[11] DSP-Based Electromechanical Motion Control,
CRC Press, 2003.
[12] MSP430xlxx Family User Guide(slauO49d)
[13] MSP430x12x Mixed Signal Microcontroller-Rev.
C(msp430f123)
[14] MSP-FET430 FLASH Emulation Tool User's
Guide(slaul38b)
[15] MSP430xllx2, MSP430x12x2 Mixed Signal
Micro controller- Rev. D
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IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical Sciences (ICTES 2007),
Dr. M.G.R. University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Dec. 20-22, 2007. pp.433-440.
ESTIMATION OF SPEED AND ROTOR POSITION OF BLDC

MOTOR USING EXTENDED KALMAN FILTER
D. Lenine*, B. Rami Reddy*, S. Vijay Kumar†
*
Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, RGMCET, Nandyal, India,
Email: [email protected], [email protected].
†
Dept. of EEE, K.I.E.T, Kakinada, India, Email: [email protected]
Keywords: Modeling of BLDC Motor, Structure of the EKF, save the process of position calibration for the shaft position
EKF Tuning Algorithm. sensors, terminal voltage sensing circuits are widely
developed so as to detect and process the PWM-Mode
Abstract terminal voltage of the stator. Instead of those shaft position
sensors. The brushless DC motor has trapezoidal electro
The brushless DC motors are preferred for industrial as well motive force (EMF) and quasi-rectangular current
as domestic applications because of their high efficiency, waveforms.
quite operation, compact form etc. Efforts have been made to
make this motor cost effective and reliable by avoiding the Three Hall Effect sensors are usually used for every 60
use of position sensors and employing estimators. The BLDC degree electrical. In addition to servo drive application with
motor has trapezoidal electromotive force and quasi- high stationary accuracy of the speed and rotor position, the
rectangular current waveforms. Hall sensors are usually used brushless dc motor requires a rotor position sensor, such as a
as the position sensors to perform current commutation for revolver or an absolute encoder. All the sensors mentioned
every 60 degree electrical. For the servo drive applications above increase the cost and size of the motor and reduce its
with high stationary accuracy of the speed and rotor position, sturdiness. Because of these reasons, the brushless dc motor
the BLDC motor requires a rotor position sensor, such as without position and speed sensors has attracted wide
absolute encoder. All the sensors mentioned, increase the cost attention.
and size of the motor and reduce its sturdiness. Because of
these reasons, the BLDC motor without position and speed The rotor position is detected for every 60 degree electrical
sensors has attracted wide attention. In the proposed work, which is necessary to perform current commutation. These
Extended Kalman Filter will be employed to estimate the methods are based on using the back emf of the motor for the
motor state variables by only using measurements of the detection of the conducting state of freewheeling diodes in
stator line voltage and current. When applying the the unexcited phase and the stator third harmonic voltage
Extended Kalman Filter, it is necessary to solve some components. Since, these methods cannot provide continual
specific problems related to the voltage and current rotor position estimation, they are not applicable for the
waveforms of the BLDC motor. In the proposed work, EKF sensorless drives in which high estimation accuracy of the
will be designed and implemented for the estimation of speed and rotor positions are necessary to estimate rotor
speed and rotor position of BLDC motor through position not only for every 60 degree electrical but also
simulation, so that the motor could run at, as low speed continuously. The rotor position of the BLDC motor is
with reasonable accuracy. It is also proposed to verify the estimated continually using measured motor terminal
simulation results. voltages and currents. The accuracy of the rotor position
estimation depends on the motor parameter variation and
1 Introduction accuracy of measured voltage and currents.
The brushless DC motor drive system incorporating motors In BLDC motor, the location of the rotor position is measured
with permanent magnet excitations are being used in a by either direct or indirect position control. In direct control
rapidly expanding range of applications, including computer the actual position is measured directly. In the indirect case,
peripherals, automotive and machine tool industries. The the actual position of the rotor is determined indirectly by
shaft position sensors, such as optical or Hall Effect position transferring the measured motor position to the load side. In
sensors are usually used to detect exact rotor position. the direct position control, only the resolution of the used
However in recent years, in order to reduce motor space and sensor determines the accuracy of the position measurement
433
IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical Sciences
of the load side, where as in indirect measurements the non- L aa = Lbb = L cc = L (3)
ideal characteristic of the transmission element between the
motor and the load, influences the position accuracy at the L ab = Lbc = Lca = M (4)
load. In general, indirect control requires a less precise
position sensor than the direct one, because the resolution of The stator phase current are constrained to
the sensor at the drive end is increased with regard to the
be, ias + ibs + ics = 0 , which leads to the simplification of the
resolution at the load side by using a reduction gear.
inductance matrix in the model as
An Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is recursive optimum
state estimators which can be used for the joint state and vas   Rs 0 0  ias   L − M 0 0  ias  eas  (5)
v  =  0 Rs 0  ibs  +  0 L−M 0  p i  +  e 
parameter estimation of a non-linear dynamic system in real-  bs     bs   bs 
 vcs   0 0 Rs   ics   0 0 L − M   ics   ecs 
time by using noisy monitored signals that are distributed by
random noise. This assumes that the measurement noise and
disturbance noise are uncorrelated. The noise sources take The electromagnetic torque is given by
into account of measurement and modeling inaccuracies. In
1
the first stage of the calculations, the states are predicted by Te = [eas ias + ebs ibs + ecs ics ] (6)
using a mathematical model (which contains previous ωm
estimates) and in the second stage; the predicted states are
continuously corrected by using a feedback correction The instantaneous induced emf can be written as,
scheme. This scheme makes use of actual measured states, by
adding a term to the predicted states (which is obtained in the eas = f as (θ r ) λ p ω m (7)
first stage). The additional term contains the weighted
difference of the measured and estimated output signals. ebs = f bs (θ r ) λ p ω m (8)
Based on the deviation from the estimated value, the EKF
provides an optimum output value at the next input instant.
ecs = f cs (θ r ) λ p ω m (9)
2 Modeling of Brushless DC Motor

Where the functions f as (θ r ), f bs (θ r ) and f cs (θ r ) have the
A. The modeling of BLDC motor same shape as eas , ebs and ecs , with a maximum magnitude
of ±1 . The induced emf has rounded edges but not sharp
Generally, the BLDC motor is a 3-phase permanent magnet
corners as is shown in the trapezoidal function. The emf is
synchronous motor. The BLDC motor is modeled in the 3-
the result of the flux-linkage derivatives and the flux linkages
phase abc variables. The derivation of this model is based on
are continuous functions. Fringing also makes the flux
the assumptions that the induced current in the rotor due to
density functions smooth with no abrupt edges.
stator harmonic fields are neglected and that iron and stray
losses are also neglected. Damper windings are not usually a
f as (θ r ) = 1 00 < θ ≤ 120 (10)
part of the PMBDCM as damping is provided by the inverter
control. The motor is considered to have three phases, even
6 120 0 < θ ≤ 180 0 (11)
though the derivation procedure is valid for any number of f a s (θ r ) = (π − θ ) − 1
phases. π
The coupled circuit equations of the stator windings in terms f as (θ r ) = − 1 180 0 < θ ≤ 300 0 (12)
of motor electrical constants are
f a s (θ r ) =
6
(θ − 2 π ) + 1 300 0 < θ ≤ 360 0 (13)
vas   Rs 0 0  ias   Laa Lab Lac  ias   eas  π
v  =  0 (1)
 bs   Rs 0  ibs  +  Lba Lbb Lbc  + ibs  +  ebs 
The function of rotor position ( θ r ) and f as (θ r ) is defined as,
 vcs   0 0 Rs  ics   Lca Lcb Lcc   ics   ecs 
The stator resistance per phase is assumed to be equal for all Te = λ p [ f as (θ r ) ias + f bs (θ r ) ibs + f cs (θ r ) ics ] (14)
three phases. The induced back EMF is assumed to be
trapezoidal. Where E is the peak value, derived as,
p It is significant to observe that the phase voltage equation is
identical to the armature voltage equation of a DC machine.
E p = λ pω m (2) That is one of the reasons for naming this machine the
permanent magnet BLDC machine. The equation of motion
434
Estimation of Speed and Rotor Position of BLDC Motor using Extended Kalman Filter
for a simple system with inertia J , friction coefficient B , and be realized from a stored table. This completes the modeling
load torque Tl is, of the permanent magnet BLDC motor.
dωm (15) B. Brushless motor drive system

J + B ω m = (T e − T L )
dt
The BLDC motor of a three-phase current controlled voltage
Electrical rotor speed and position are related by source inverter, which is connected to the DC supply, feeds
controlled power to the motor. In the inverter block IGBT
dθ r P (16) switches are used in the three-phase voltage source inverter.
= ω m
dt 2
The combining all the relevant equations, the system in the

state-space from is
dx
= AX + BU (17)
dt
Where,
X = [ias ibs icsωmθ ] (18)
 Rs λp 
 − 0 0 − f as (θ r ) 0 
 L1 L1 
  Figure 1: The control diagram of BLDC motor
Rs λp
 0 − 0 − f bs (θ r ) 0 
 L1 L1 
  3 Extended Kalman Filter
A= R λ (19)
f cs (θ r ) 0 
p
0 0 − s −
 L1 L1  A. System configuration
 
 λp λp λp B 
 J f as (θ r ) J
f bs (θ r )
J
f cs (θ r ) −
J
0 Figure.2 shows the block diagram of the system for speed and
  rotor position estimation of a BLDC motor. The system can
 P  functionally divide into two parts: the speed control system
 0 0 0 0
2  and estimation system. The first one consists of a power
circuit (dc supply, inverter, and motor) and control circuit
1  which perform two functions: current control and speed
L 0 0 0 
control. The measurement speed (ωr), rotor position (θr) and
 1  phase currents are used as feedback signals.
 1 
0 0 0 
 L1  The main block of the estimation algorithm is the EKF
B= 1  (20) defined on the basis of average line voltage at the kth-
0 0 0  sampling time, along with the measured current, a set of the
 L1  EKF input variables by means of which the speed and rotor
 1 position are estimated. The control signal is Vcont,k which
0 0 0 − 
 J turns ON/OFF the active pair of the inverter transistors. The
 0 0 0 0  active pair of transistor is determined by commutation logic,
using the estimated rotor position.
u = [Vas Vbs Vcs Tl ] (21)
B. Extended kalman filter
L1 = L − M (22) The classical Kalman filter was invented for linear systems
only. Many real systems, including BLDC motor, are
The rotor position θ r , which is the state variable is required however non-linear. If the nonlinearities are of minor
importance, they can often be neglected. Non-linearities that
so as to drive the functions f as (θ r ), f bs (θ r ), and f cs (θ r ) that
can not be neglected have to be compensated for in one way
435
or the other, before a Kalman filter can be applied to the C. Selection of the time domain BLDC machine model
system. One effective method to linearize non-linear
equations around a certain working point is by using Taylor It is possible to have EKF implementations using time
series. Applying the Taylor series to nonlinearities in the domain machine models expressed in the stationary reference
system equations, results in a version of the Kalman filter frame, or expressed in the rotor reference frames. Generally
called the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). This observer is the model is expressed in stator reference frame with the
capable of handling almost any non-linear system at the cost following assumptions.
of calculating Taylor series at each time sample. The The effects of saturation of the magnetic paths of the
Extended Kalman Filter can not be proved to be optimal, but machine have been neglected,
this does not mean that the solution is bad. On the contrary, Stator inductance is assumed to be constant,
the non-linear version of the Kalman filter usually performs dω
very well. Rotor speed deviation is negligible, r = 0 .
dt
In EKF, the rotor speed is considered as a state variable. This
makes the system matrix A nonlinear i.e. A = A( X ) .
The state space representation of the system is as follows.
dx
= AX + BU (23)
dt
Y = CX (24)
The eqns (23) and (24) describe the time domain model of the
BLDC motor and can be visualized by the block diagram
shown in Figure. 3.
Figure 2: System configuration
The Extended Kalman Filter is necessary to estimate rotor

position of BLDC motor continuously by using measured
voltages and currents. At each time step, the motor current is Figure 3: Block diagram of the time domain state space
estimated in two stages to correct the predicted rotor position model of the BLDC motor.
and the estimated flux linkage. The accuracy of the rotor
position and speed estimation depends significantly on the D. Time-discrete state-space model of the BLDC motor
motor parameter variation and accuracy of the measured
voltage and current. The time-discrete state-space model of the BLDC motor can
be obtained from equation (23) and (24) as follows:
The main design steps for a speed and rotor position-
sensorless BLDC motor drive implementation using a X ( k + 1) = Ad X ( k ) + Bd ( k )u( k ) (25)
discretized Extended Kalman Filter algorithm are as follows;
Selection of the time domain machine model Y ( k ) = Cd ( k ) X ( k ) (26)
Discretization of the machine model
Determination of the noise and state covariance matrices By using equations (25) and (26), the time-discrete state-
Q, R, P space model of the BLDC motor is obtained as shown in
Implementation of the discretized Extended Kalman Filter figure 4.
algorithm tuning.
436
used, and also the system covariance matrix (Q). During the
filtering of the stage,
Figure 4: Block diagram of the time-discrete state-space

model of the BLDC motor.
E. Determination of the noise and state covariance

matrices Q, R, P
A critical part of the design of the EKF is to use correct initial
values for the various covariance matrixes Q, R, and P. These
have important effect on the filter stability and convergence
time. The system noise covariance Q accounts for the model
inaccuracy, the system disturbances and the noise introduced
by the voltage measurements. The noise covariance R
accounts for measurement noise introduced by the current
Figure 5: Structure of the EKF
sensors.
Q = Q0 = diag ( a, a, a, b, c ) (27) the filtered states ( Xˆ ) are obtained from the predicted
estimates by adding a correction term to the predicted value
P = P0 = diag ( e, e, e, f , g ) (28) (X), this correction term is Ke = K (Y − Yˆ ) , where
e = (Y − Yˆ ) an error term is and it uses measured values. This
R = R0 = diag ( m, m, m) (29)
error is minimized in the EKF. The structure of the Extended
Kalman Filter (EKF) is shown in figure 5.
Where,
The state estimates are obtained in the following steps:
Q11 = Q22 = Q33 = a; Q44 = b; andQ55 = c
Step 1: Initialzation of the state vector and covariance
P11 = P22 = P33 = e; P44 = f ; andP55 = g . matrices,
R11 = R22 = R33 = m Starting values of the state vector X o = X ( t o ) and the
starting values of the noise covariance matrixes Q0 and
In general, Q is a 5 by 5 matrix, R is a 3 by 3 matrix, and P is R0 are set, together with the starting value of the state
a 5 by 5 matrix. This means that in total there are 59
covariance elements to be determined. However, since the covariance matrix P0 , where P is the covariance matrix of the
noise signals are not correlated, a reduction of the required state vector.
elements results, and e.g. and R will only contain 9 unknown
diagonal elements. Step 2: Prediction of the state vector
Prediction of the state vector at sampling time (k+1) from the

F. Implementation of the discretized EKF algorithm
input vector u (k) and the state vector at previous sampling
tuning
time X (k), by using Ad ( k ) and Bd ( k ) , is obtained by
An Extended Kalman Filter is an optimal, recursive state- performing,
estimator, and it contains basically two main stages, a
prediction stage and a filtering stages. During the prediction X ( k + 1/ k ) = X ( k + 1) = Ad ( k ) X ( k ) + Bd ( k )u( k ) (30)
stage, the next predicted values of the state X ( k + 1) and the
predicted state covariance matrix (P) is also obtained. For this The notation X ( k + 1/ k ) means that this is a predicted value
purpose, the state-variable equations of the BLDC motor are at the (k+1)th instant, and it is based on measurements up to
437
the kth instant. However, to simplify the notation, it has been For the realization of the EKF algorithm it is very convenient
replaced by X(k+1). Similarly, X (k/k) has been replaced X to use a signal processor because of the large number of
(k). multiplications required and also because of the fact that all
of the computations have to be performed fast with in one
Step 3: Covariance estimation of prediction. The covariance sampling interval.
matrix of prediction is estimated as,
4 Simulation Results and Discussions
P * ( k + 1) = f ( k + 1) Pˆ ( k ) f T ( k + 1) + Q (31)
The BLDC model drive with speed and current controllers is
Where P (k+1/k) has been replaced by p (k+1), P (k/k) has simulated in simulink model. The speed and torque responses
been replaced by P (k). Where f is the gradient matrix, for a step change in input and step change of load torque
condition are shown in Figures 4.1and 4.3. The motor is
loaded with a full load torque of 0.89 Nm at 0.2 sec
∂x [
f ( k + 1) = ∂ Ad X + Bd U ]x = xˆ ( k +1) (32)
Step 4: Kalman filter gain computation. The Kalman filter

gain (correction matrix) is computed as
K ( k + 1) = P * ( k + 1) hT ( k + 1)[ h( k + 1) P * ( k + 1) hT ( k + 1) + R ]−1
(33)
For simplicity of notation P (k+1/k) has been replaced by

Figure 4.1: Speed response
P (k+1), and h (k+1) is a gradient matrix, defined as
∂x [
h( k + 1) = ∂ C d X ] x = x* ( k +1) (34)
Step 5: State vector estimation. The state vector estimation

(corrected state vector estimation, filtering) at time (k+1) is
performed as
Figure 4.2: Measured speed error under no load condition
Xˆ ( k + 1) = X * ( k + 1) + K ( k + 1)[Y ( k + 1) − Yˆ ( k + 1)] (35)
Where for simplicity of notation, Xˆ = ( k + 1 / k + 1) has been

replaced by Xˆ ( k + 1) , x ( k + 1 / k ) has been replaced by X
(k+1), and
Yˆ ( k + 1) = C d X * ( k + 1) (36)
Step 6: Covariance matrix of estimation error. The error Figure 4.3: Torque response
covariance matrix can be obtained from
Pˆ ( k + 1) = P * ( k + 1) − K ( k + 1) h( k + 1) P * ( k + 1) (37)
Where for simplicity of notation Pˆ = ( k + 1 / k + 1) has been

replaced by Pˆ ( k + 1) , and Pˆ ( k + 1/ k ) has been replaced
by P ( k + 1) .
Step 7: k = k + 1, X ( k ) = X ( k − 1) , P ( k ) = P ( k − 1) and go
Figure 4.4: Motor phase current
to step1.
438
Figure 4.1 represents speed response under no load and rated

speed condition. It reaches its steady state value of 418
rad/sec (4000 rpm) at 0.05 sec. Figure 4.2 shows the
measured speed error. Figure 4.3 shows the corresponding
torque response and it clearly follows the load condition.
Figure 4.4 shows the phase current (A phase) under no load
condition.
Figure 4.5 represents the actual and estimated speed under no Figure 4.9: Estimated speed error
load. Figures 4.6 and 4.7 are the actual and estimated speeds
of the BLDC motor. Figures 4.8 and 4.9 are the actual and
estimated error under a step wie change in speed.
Figure 4.10: Torque responses under step change at 0.2 sec.
Figure 4.5: Actual and Estimated speed (EKF) responses

under no load
Figure 4.11: Actual rotor position
Figure 4.6: Reference and Actual speed
Figure 4.12: Estimated rotor position (EKF)
Figure 4.7: Estimated speed
Figure 4.13: Actual phase current
Figure 4.8: Measured speed error
439
side can be determined indirectly from the estimated rotor

position. In that case, the position control system operates
without any mechanical sensor for speed and position
measurements. Further the simulation results prove that
sensorless operation of the indirect position controlled drive
system is possible.
Figure 4.14: Estimated phase current (EKF) References

[1] T.M.Jahns, and M.Ehsani, (1991), “Four quadrant sensorless
Figures 4.10 and 4.11 are the actual and estimated rotor brushless motor,” in Proc. IEEE APEC’91’, pp.202- 209.
positions by EKF algorithm. The motor speed command is [2] S.Ogasawara and H.Akagi, (1990), “An approach to position
initially set at 313.5 rad/sec (3000 rpm) and at t = 0.2 sec; the sensorless drive for brushless dc motors,” Conf. Rec. IEEE-IAS,
reference speed is change to 418 rad/sec (4000 rpm). The Innu.Meeting, 1990, pp.443-447.
estimated speed response clearly follows the actual speed [3] J.C .Morieera,(1994),“Indirect sensing for rotor flux position
after the transient period. The oscillation in the estimated of permanent magnet AC motors operating in wide speed range,”
speed depends on the initial values of the noise covariance Conf, Rec. IEEE-IAS Annul. Meeting, 1994, pp.401-407.
[4] N.Ertugrul and P.P.Acarnley,(1994), “A new algorithm for
matrices. The estimated rotor position also follows the actual
sensorless operation of permanent magnet motors,”IEEE Trans.Ind
rotor position. .Applicat.., vol.30,pp.126-133,Jan./Feb.1994.
[5] H.Brunsbach and G.Henneberger, and T.Klepsch,(1993)
5 Motor Specification “Position controlled permanent excited synchronous motor without
mechanical sensors,” Proc. EPE’93, Brighton, U.K.,1993,pp.38-43.
[6] R.Dhaouadi, N.Mohan, and L.Norum,(1991), “Design and
implemention of an extended Kalman filter for the state estimation
of a permanent magnet synchronous motor,”IEEE Trans.Power
Electron.,vol. 6,pp.491-497,July 1991.
[7] R.Krishna and R.Ghoseh,(1989), “Starting algorithm and
performance of a PMDC brushless motor drive system with no
position sensor ,” Proc .IEEE PESE’89,1989,pp.815-821.
[8] M.Jadric and B.Terzic. (1999), “Sensorless brushless dc motor
with improved speed estimation accuracy using stator resistance
estimation,” in Proc. EPE’99, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1999,CD-
ROM.
[9] L.Loron and G.Laliberte,(1993), “Application of the extended
Kalman filter to parameters estimation of induction motors.” Proc.
EPE’93, Brighton, U.K., 1993, pp.85-90.
[10] M.Jadric and B.Terzic,(2001), “Design and Implementation
6 Conclusions of the Extended Kalman Filter for the speed and rotor position
estimation of brushless motor.” Proc IEEE’2001, vol.48.
The speed and rotor position of the BLDC motor are [11] Brunsbach B.J 1991, “Sensorless operation of permanent
estimated using Extended Kalman Filter method. The speed excited synchronous motor and squirrel cage induction machines
and rotor position are determined from the measured line using state identification.
voltages and currents of the motor. If such a sensorless drive
is applied in indirect position control, the position at the load
440
3040 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 8, AUGUST 2009
An FPGA-Based Novel Digital PWM Control

Scheme for BLDC Motor Drives
Anand Sathyan, Student Member, IEEE, Nikola Milivojevic, Student Member, IEEE,
Young-Joo Lee, Student Member, IEEE, Mahesh Krishnamurthy, Member, IEEE, and
Ali Emadi, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Development of advanced motor drives has yielded Replacing these inefficient motors with more efficient brushless
increases in efficiency and reliability. Residential and commercial dc (BLDC) motors will result in substantial energy savings.
appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioning systems use A permanent-magnet synchronous machine has several ad-
conventional motor drive technology. The machines found in these
applications are characterized by low efficiency and high main- vantages over other machine types. Most notably (compared
tenance. A brushless dc (BLDC) motor drive is characterized by to other dc motors), they require lower maintenance due to
higher efficiency, lower maintenance, and higher cost. In a market the elimination of the mechanical commutator. They also have
driven by profit margins, the appliance industry is reluctant to high power density. Compared to induction machines, they have
replace the conventional motor drives with the advanced motor lower inertia, allowing for faster dynamic response to reference
drives (BLDC) due to their higher cost. Therefore, it is necessary
to have a low-cost but effective BLDC motor controller. This paper commands. In addition, they are more efficient due to the
lays the groundwork for the development of a new low-cost IC permanent magnets, which results in significantly lower rotor
for control of BLDC motors. A simple novel digital pulsewidth- losses. The major disadvantage with permanent-magnet motors
modulation control has been implemented for a trapezoidal BLDC is their higher cost and relatively greater degree of complexity
motor drive system. Due to the simplistic nature of this control, introduced by the power electronic converter used to drive them
it has the potential to be implemented in a low-cost application-
specific integrated circuit. The novel controller is modeled and [2], [3].
verified using simulations. Experimental verification is carried Hysteresis current control and pulsewidth modulation
out using field-programmable gate arrays to validate the claims (PWM) control coupled with continuous control theory have
presented. produced the most widely used BLDC motor control techniques
Index Terms—Brushless dc (BLDC) motor drives, converters, [4]. Hysteresis current control is essential toward achieving
field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), inverters, motion con- adequate servo performance, namely, instantaneous torque con-
trol, pulsewidth modulation (PWM). trol, yielding faster speed response compared to PWM control.
For most applications, proportional-integral (PI) current and
speed compensators are sufficient to establish a well-regulated
I. I NTRODUCTION
speed/torque controller. In other cases, state feedback control is
A N ELECTRIC motor is defined as a transducer that con-

verts electrical energy into mechanical energy. Electrical
motors are an integral part of industrial plants with no less than
needed to achieve a more precise control of the BLDC motor.
Classic control theory and linear system theory are well un-
derstood but are highly complex and require extensive control
5 billion motors built worldwide every year. Residential and systems knowledge to develop a well-designed controller [5].
commercial applications mostly use conventional motor drive Discrete control theory allows for such controllers to be dig-
technologies. Typically, machines found in these appliances are itally implemented with microcontrollers, microprocessors, or
single-phase induction motors or brushed dc machines which digital signal processors (DSPs). Digitizing analog controllers
are characterized by low efficiency and high maintenance, serves to add complexity to the overall design procedure [6],
respectively [1], [2]. Single-phase induction motors are less [7]. Moreover, digital implementation of a continuous control
efficient because of the ohmic loss in the rotor and due to technique does not produce a digital controller. Instead, what
the phase angle displacement between the stator current and results is a digitally implemented control technique, which
back electromotive force (EMF). In the case of dc machines, typically results in high controller cost.
they require more maintenance due to the presence of brushes. In this paper, a novel digital PWM controller has been
proposed for a BLDC motor. This controller treats the BLDC
motor as a digital system. The BLDC system is only allowed to
Manuscript received November 17, 2008; revised April 23, 2009. First
published May 15, 2009; current version published July 24, 2009.
operate at a low duty (DL ) or a high duty (DH ). Speed regula-
A. Sathyan was with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineer- tion is achieved by alternating between low duty and high duty,
ing, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616 USA. He is now with which makes the concept of the controller extremely simple for
Chrysler Corporation, Detroit, MI 48234 USA.
N. Milivojevic, Y.-J. Lee, M. Krishnamurthy, and A. Emadi are with the design and implementation. In addition, this technique utilizes
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Tech- only one current sensor in the dc link. This helps reduce the
nology, Chicago, IL 60616 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). cost and complexity of motor control hardware and, in turn, can
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. boost the demand of BLDC motors for commercial mass pro-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2009.2022067 duction applications. For the controller presented in this paper,
0278-0046/$26.00 © 2009 IEEE

SATHYAN et al.: FPGA-BASED NOVEL DIGITAL PWM CONTROL SCHEME FOR BLDC MOTOR DRIVES 3041
Fig. 1. Typical inverter drive system for a BLDC motor.
Fig. 3. Sensor versus drive timing.
the motor winding is constant for 120◦ , before and after which
it changes linearly with rotor angle.
In order to get constant output power and, consequently, con-
stant output torque, current is driven through a motor winding
during the flat portion of the back-EMF waveform. Only two
switches are turned on at a time, one in a high side and the other
in a low side. Thus, for a star-connected motor winding, two
phases are connected in series across the dc bus, while the third
winding is open. The switches in Fig. 1 are operated such that
each phase carries current only during the 120◦ period when
Fig. 2. Back EMF and phase current variation with rotor electrical angle. the back EMF is constant. Thus, there is a commutation event
between phases for every 60◦ electrical, as shown in Fig. 2.
Effectively, it means that there is a current transition every
characteristic equations of a BLDC machine have been used to 60◦ . Appropriate commutation therefore requires knowledge of
derive the design procedure, which involves simple first-order rotor position, which can be directly detected using position
nonhomogenous differential equations. During steady-state op- sensors or estimated in sensorless manner by monitoring back
eration, the design procedure is reduced to a few simple alge- EMF in the open phase [11].
braic equations. Computer simulations and experimental results Unlike a brushed dc motor, the commutation of a BLDC
are presented for proof of concept. motor is controlled electronically [12]. To rotate the BLDC
motor, the stator windings should be energized in a sequence.
It is important to know the rotor position in order to follow
II. B RUSHLESS DC M OTOR D RIVE S TRATEGIES
the proper energizing sequence. For the present system, rotor
For a three-phase BLDC application, the most common position is sensed using Hall effect sensors embedded into the
topology used is a three-phase buck-derived converter or a stator. By reading the Hall effect sensors, a 3-b code can be
three-phase inverter bridge [8], [9]. The typical inverter drive obtained, with values ranging from one to six. Each code value
system for a BLDC motor is shown in Fig. 1. represents a sector in which the rotor is presently located. Each
As shown in Fig. 1, the output stage consists of a three- code value therefore gives us information on which windings
phase inverter composed of switches that could be MOSFETs need to be excited to turn the rotor [13], [14]. State “0” and “7”
or insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs). If IGBTs are are considered invalid states for Hall effect sensors. A timing
used, antiparallel diodes need to be connected across them for diagram showing the relationship between the sensor outputs
carrying reverse currents, while MOSFETs use body diodes. and the required motor drive voltages is shown in Fig. 3.
MOSFETs give lower turn-off switching loss and usually lower The numbers at the top of Fig. 3 correspond to the current
diode forward drop, but that advantage may be offset by higher phases shown in Fig. 4. It is apparent from Fig. 3 that the
ON -state voltage drop and turn-on switching/diode reverse re- three sensor outputs overlap in such a way as to create six
covery loss than IGBTs. Typical waveforms for a three-phase unique 3-b codes corresponding to each of the drive phases. The
BLDC motor with trapezoidal flux distribution are shown in numbers shown around the periphery of the motor diagram in
Fig. 2 [10]. Approximately, the back EMF induced per phase of Fig. 4 represent the sensor position code. The north pole of the
Fig. 4. BLDC motor showing the commutation sequence.
TABLE I
CLOCKWISE SENSOR AND DRIVE BITS BY PHASE ORDER
Fig. 5. Conventional PWM current control.
rotor points to the code that is output at that rotor position. The
numbers are the sensor logic levels where the most significant
bit is sensor C and the least significant bit is sensor A [15]. The
input sensor state and the corresponding drive state required for
commutation can be put in the form of a state table as shown in
Table I.
III. D IGITAL PWM C ONTROL OF BLDC D RIVES

Speed control in a BLDC involves changing the applied volt-
age across the motor phases [16], [17]. This can be done using Fig. 6. Flowchart describing the novel digital control.
a sensored method based on the concept of pulse amplitude
modulation, PWM, or hysteresis control [18], [19]. Another This paper presents the design, simulation, and experimen-
method involves control using sensorless techniques. In the last tal verification of a novel constant-frequency digital PWM
two decades, many sensorless drive solutions have been offered controller which has been designed for a BLDC motor drive
to eliminate the costly and fragile position sensor for BLDC system. In essence, the controller treats the BLDC motor as
motors with trapezoidal back EMFs [20], [21]. a digital system. The concept of this digital controller is very
A common control algorithm for a permanent-magnet BLDC simple. Speed regulation is achieved by using two levels of
motor is PWM current control. It is based on the assumption of duty cycles—a high duty (DH ) and a low duty (DL ). The rules
linear relationship between the phase current and the torque, of the digital controller can be explained using the flowchart
similar to that in a brushed dc motor. Therefore, by adjusting shown in Fig. 6.
phase current, the electromagnetic torque can be controlled Unlike a hysteresis current controller, a PWM control does
to meet the requirement. The general structure of a current not have an inherent current control capability. Hence, a current
controller for a BLDC motor is shown in Fig. 5. Instantaneous limiter has to be introduced. Current hysteresis digital con-
current in the motor is regulated in each phase by a hysteresis trollers have been reported for a BLDC motor in [4]. This paper
regulator, which maintains the current within adjustable limits. presents a controller with no need of any state observer. Fig. 7
The rotor position information is sensed to enable commutation shows the proposed digital controller. Fig. 8 shows the complete
logic, which has six outputs to control the upper and lower block diagram of the motor drive system.
phase leg power switches [22]. The current reference is de- A proportional controller provides the reference for the
termined by a PI regulator, which maintains the rotor average current limit. The current is made to stay within a maximum
speed constant. and minimum limit. The maximum value of Ilimit is 1.5 times
Fig. 7. Proposed digital control.
Fig. 8. Block diagram for digital PWM control for a BLDC motor drive
system.
the rated motor current. This is because motors can handle Fig. 9. Gate switching waveforms.
1.5 times the rated current for a short duration of time. The
minimum value of Ilimit decides the steady-state error. For a As long as
value equal to zero, a large steady-state error is observed in
the simulation. The minimum value of Ilimit is defined as the ωactual < ω ∗ − Δω, Ilimit = Ilimit,max . (3)
ratio of a percentage (1%) of the rated torque to the torque
constant. In addition, Ilimit α ωerror
The proportional constant K for a desired speed ripple can
be calculated as follows. In steady state, Δω ≤ |ωerr ∗ 2|. In the Ilimit = K ∗ ωerror . (4)
worst case, Δω = |ωerr ∗ 2|. For the desired speed ripple Δω,
a constant Kset can be defined as By using (1)–(3) in (4), it can be shown that
Δω 2 ∗ Ilimit,max
Kset = . (1) K= . (5)
ωrated Kset ∗ ωrated
Taking the maximum value of the speed ripple In this control strategy, both the high- and low-side switches
are switched simultaneously. Both high- and low-side diodes
ωerr ∗ 2 conduct. The waveforms for this type of switching are shown
Kset = . (2)
ωrated in Fig. 9.
Fig. 10. Steady-state speed response.
IV. C ONTROLLER D ESIGN The maximum deviation from the reference speed (ω ∗ ) due
to the application of high duty DH is denoted by ΔωH , and
The value of the duty ratio D can be obtained from the
the maximum deviation from the reference speed due to the
electrical and mechanical equations. The value of D can be
application of a low duty DL is denoted by ΔωL . The speed
expressed as a function of the motor parameters.
response can be expressed as
From the torque equation, we have
Tem − TL ∗ Tem − TL b
dω ω(t) = + ω − e− J t . (12)
Tem = J + bω + TL (6) b b
dt
where Tem , ω(t), b, J, and TL denote developed electromag- From Fig. 10, at time t = t2 + TP

netic torque, rotor angular velocity, viscous friction constant, Tem − TL Tem − TL b
rotor moment of inertia, and load torque, respectively ΔωH = + ω∗ − e− J t − ω ∗ . (13)

b b
dω At time t = t1 + TP
Kt I = J + bω + TL (7)
dt
Tem − TL Tem − TL b
where Kt = torque constant and I = average current. At ΔωL = − + ω∗ − e− J t + ω ∗ .
b b
steady state, (7) can be written in terms of steady-state angular (14)
velocity ωss as
The speed ripple can be calculated as
1
I(ωss ) = (bωss + TL ). (8)
Kt Δω = ΔωH + ΔωL (15)
ΔTem b

At steady state, the time phase voltage equations can be written Δω = 1 − e− J TP (16)
in terms of phase voltage Van , phase current I, winding resis-
b
Δω
tance, and velocity constant Ke as TP = −τm ln 1 − ΔTem (17)
b
Van = IRa + Ke ωss . (9)
where τm = mechanical time constant
Substituting the value of the steady-state current from (10) and
Δω
defining the phase voltage in terms of dc-link voltage Vdc and TP = −τm ln 1 − . (18)
duty D, we get ωNL,max
(TL + ωss b) From (18), for a desired speed ripple, the sampling time can
DVdc = R + Ke ωss (10) be calculated. ωNL,max is the maximum speed under no-load
Kt
conditions.
where ωss denotes the steady-state angular velocity.
Therefore, the duty ratio can be expressed in terms of the B. Steady-State Analysis
motor parameters as
For the purpose of analysis, the proposed digital controller
1 (TL + ωss b) was considered equivalent to a proportional controller with high
D= R + Ke ωss . (11)
Vdc Kt gain and saturation. This analysis was aimed at determining if
the actual motor speed reaches the reference speed at steady
A. Speed Ripple Calculation state. The transfer function for a BLDC motor is shown as
Kt
Steady-state error is a function of the speed samples. It is ω(s) JLa
= (19)
therefore necessary to find out the effect of sampling time (TP ) V (s) s2 + (JRa +BLa ) +Kt Ke )
s + (BRaJL
JLa a
on the speed ripple. Fig. 10 shows the speed response at steady
state. where V = DVin , with D being the duty cycle.
Fig. 12. Final experimental setup.
TABLE II
DATA SHEET FOR BLDC MOTOR FROM POLY-SCIENTIFIC (BN42-EU-02)
Fig. 11. Closed-loop control of the BLDC motor with the novel digital PWM
controller.
The overall block diagram with the closed-loop control using

the proposed novel digital PWM controller is shown in Fig. 11.
The tolerated error decides the sampling in the speed loop.
Based on the speed error, a high duty or low duty is selected
by the Gw block. The output of the Gw block is Dw , which
can be Dh or Dl . The duty, along with the information about
the actual motor current, is the input to the Gi block, based
on which it selects a high duty, low duty, or a skip state. The
output of the Gi block is Di , which can be Dh , Dl , or D0 . The
minimum current (imin ) is used to compensate for the R and
B terms so that the steady-state error is reduced. The output
of the Gi block is a PWM voltage signal which is given as the
the predefined value, the current regulator sends a signal that
input to the BLDC motor.
automatically sets the duty cycle to zero. Therefore, the current
Simulations were carried out for a maximum variation from
is not allowed to rise further, until the value drops below the
the reference speed of about 10 r/min. The necessary frequency
limited value again.
of sampling in the speed loop for the desired speed ripple can be
An FPGA platform used for controlling the BLDC machine
calculated from (18). For example, a speed ripple of 10 r/min
is Spartan 3 family, from Xilinx. Reference speed value was set
requires a minimum sampling time of 916 μs. This was con-
digitally, and a speed loop was used to compare the actual speed
firmed. From measurements, this sampling time resulted in a
and the reference speed and based on error to determine the duty
speed ripple of about 6 r/min.
cycle for the next period. The actual speed was easily calculated
as a time between two Hall effect signals. The schematic of the
V. D ESCRIPTION OF E XPERIMENTAL S ETUP
controller simulated in the FPGA is shown in Fig. 13.
An experimental setup was constructed in order to implement Inputs to the FPGA device include three Hall effect sensors
and further validate the simulation results of the proposed and reference speed information, while output signals are trig-
technique. The following section gives a brief description of gers for switching on and off IGBTs. In addition, the dc-link
the requirements and final designs for the experimental setup. current was measured using LEM transducer, and analog signal
The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 12. Parameters of the is sent first to A/D converter, and then to FPGA, for current
test machine are given in Table II. protection. In order to show the speed error, 8-b D/A (digital-
The inverter was built using Pwrx IGBT modules, rated at to-analog) converter was used.
50 A, 600 V, with a switching frequency of 6 kHz. Gate signals As shown in Figs. 12 and 13, the logic used to control the
were generated in the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) BLDC motor is very simple with few components. As a base for
controller and buffered using an inverted Schmidt circuit. For comparison, when using conventional control schemes with a
the mechanical load, constant load torque was provided by a DSP, the cost may be as much as 20 dollars [23]. The novel dig-
magnetic brake. Current protection was realized by adding a ital PWM control scheme uses 3 adders, 3 comparators, 5 flip-
dc-link current transducer. This sensor was used to sense the flops, 30 logic elements, and 3 counters. In mass production,
dc-link current and keep it below a maximum value in order to an analog IC implemented using the aforementioned elements
limit inrush current. If the value of the dc-link current exceeds would cost less than a dollar, which would make the BLDC
Fig. 13. Block diagram showing operations and functions implemented in

FPGA device.
Fig. 15. Experimental results for a reference speed of 2500 r/min under no-
load condition.
Fig. 14. Simulated duty, speed, and current response for a commanded speed
of 2500 r/min for full-load operation.
motors affordable for manufacturers to use in their products.

In addition, in conventional schemes, three current sensors are
required [1], whereas this control scheme requires only one
current sensor at the dc link. Furthermore, this scheme can be
effectively implemented on an FPGA as opposed to DSPs that
are used for the implementation of complex control schemes.
This makes the present technique significantly cost effective.
VI. S IMULATION R ESULTS AND

E XPERIMENTAL V ERIFICATION
For the verification of the control scheme, several operating
conditions were selected. Fig. 14 shows the simulated response
for a reference speed of 2500 r/min under full-load conditions.
This figure includes the variation of speed versus commanded
reference, duty ratio assigned, and the resultant current.
Figs. 15–21 show the experimental results obtained for vari-
ous operating conditions, and Table III summarizes these results
for various load conditions and reference speeds. It can be noted Fig. 16. Experimental results for a reference speed of 2500 r/min. Load is
that the average error is well below 5%. In addition, the absolute 30% of rated value.
Fig. 19. Experimental results for a reference speed of 2100 r/min under
full load.
Fig. 17. Experimental results for a reference speed of 1500 r/min under no-
load condition.
Fig. 20. Speed response for change in load torque and for a reference speed
of 2000 r/min.
value of the maximum speed ripple stays well within 30 r/min,

Fig. 18. Experimental results for a reference speed of 1500 r/min. Load is or in other words, the maximum error stays below 5%. Hence,
30% of rated value. this control technique is well suited for applications where high
VII. C ONCLUSION
A new digital control concept for BLDC machines has
been introduced and experimentally verified. The aim of this
paper is to develop a low-cost controller for applications where
inefficient single-phase induction motors are used. Due to the
simplistic nature of this control, it has the potential to be imple-
mented in a low-cost application-specific integrated circuit. The
controller exploits the characteristic of most electromechanical
systems. Since electrical time constants are much faster relative
to the mechanical time constants, speed regulation with an
acceptable amount of ripple is possible by rapid switching of
states. Furthermore, this control strategy does not require a
state observer. Under dynamic load conditions, the proposed
controller was found to be capable of regulating speed without
the use of an observer. This results in a considerable reduction
of size and the cost of the system.
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[1] A. Emadi, Handbook of Automotive Power Electronics and Motor Drives.
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control technique can be implemented are washing machines, for trapezoidal brushless DC motor drives,” in Proc. Power Electron.
Technol. Conf., Chicago, IL, Nov. 2004.
dryers, machine tools, pumps, refrigerators, etc. [14] F. Rodriguez and A. Emadi, “A novel digital control technique for brush-
In order to test the stability of the proposed technique, the less DC motor drives: Conduction-angle control,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Elect.
response of the system was observed for a sudden change Mach. Drives Conf., May 2005, pp. 308–314.
[15] W. Brown, “Brushless DC control made easy,” Application Notes—
in operating conditions (Figs. 20 and 21). Fig. 20 shows the Microchip. AN857.
response for a step change in load torque, which was varied [16] P. Pillay and R. Krishnan“Modeling of permanent magnet motor drives,”
from 20% to 80%. Fig. 21 shows the response of the system for IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 537–541, Nov. 1988.
[17] P. Pillay and R. Krishnan, “Modeling, simulation and analysis of
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commanded value. Thus, this simple low-cost stable control [18] M. Tomita, T. Senjyu, S. Doki, and S. Okuma, “New sensorless control for
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[19] N. Keskar, M. Batello, A. Guerra, and A. Gorgerino, “Power loss Young-Joo Lee (S’07) received the B.S. degree
estimation in BLDC motor drives using iCalc,” Application Notes— in electrical engineering from Korea University of
International Rectifier. AN-1048. Technology and Education, Cheonan, Korea, in 1996
[20] N. Matsui“Sensorless PM brushless DC motor drives,” IEEE Trans. Ind. and the M.S. degree from Gwang-Woon University,
Electron., vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 300–308, Apr. 1996. Seoul, Korea, in 2003. Since 2006, he has been
[21] Y. Lai, F. Shyu, and Y. Chang, “Novel loss reduction pulse width modu- working toward the Ph.D. degree in the Department
lation technique for brushless dc motor drives fed by MOSFET inverter,” of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois In-
IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 19, no. 6, pp. 1646–1652, Nov. 2004. stitute of Technology, Chicago. His Ph.D. research
[22] Z. Q. Zhu, Y. Liu, and D. Howe, “Comparison of performance of brushless focuses on integrated bidirectional converter for
DC drives under direct torque control and PWM current control,” in Proc. plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
8th Int. Conf. Elect. Mach. Syst., Sep. 2005, vol. 2, pp. 1486–1491. In 1995, he joined SunStar R&C, Incheon, Korea,
[23] F. Rodriguez, “Advanced digital control techniques for brush-less where he specialized in industrial sewing machines and controllers, and motors
DC (BLDC) motor drives,” Ph.D. dissertation, Illinois Inst. Technol., and controllers for industrial sewing machines. He then joined Genoray Com-
Chicago, Dec. 2006. pany, Ltd., Seongnam, Korea. He has over ten years of industrial experience
and has developed several commercial system controllers for sewing machines
and medical X-ray fluoroscopy equipment, which require control of brushless
dc motors, induction and stepper motors, high-frequency full-bridge converters,
X-ray electron tubes, and other electric–pneumatic actuators.
Anand Sathyan (S’04) received the B.S. degree
(with distinction) in electrical engineering from
Amrita Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India,
Mahesh Krishnamurthy (S’02–M’08) received the
in 1998, the M.S. degree (with distinction) in electri-
M.S. degree from the University of Missouri, Rolla,
cal engineering from Coimbatore Institute of Tech-
nology, Coimbatore, in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree in 2004 and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
Texas, Arlington, in 2008.
from the Department of Electrical and Computer En-
Since 2008, he has been with the Department of
gineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago.
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Insti-
From August 2001 to August 2004, he was a
tute of Technology, Chicago, as an Assistant Profes-
Faculty Member with the Department of Electrical
sor. His current research interests include numerical
Engineering, Amrita Institute of Technology. From
analysis of energy conversion in electric machines;
August 2004 to December 2008, he was a Research Assistant with the Grainger
Power Electronics and Motor Drives Laboratory, Illinois Institute of Technol- design, analysis, and control of power electronics
and drives in renewable energy; and hybrid and plug-
ogy. Since April 2009, he has been with Chrysler Corporation, Detroit, MI,
in hybrid vehicular applications.
working on hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles. His research interests include
power electronics, motor drives, and renewable energy systems.
Ali Emadi (S’98–M’00–SM’03) received the B.S.

and M.S. degrees (with highest distinction) in elec-
Nikola Milivojevic (S’07) received the B.S. and trical engineering from Sharif University of Technol-
M.S. degrees from the University of Belgrade, ogy, Tehran, Iran, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
Belgrade, Serbia. He is currently working toward engineering from Texas A&M University, College
the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical and Station.
Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technol- He is the Harris Perlstein Endowed Chair Profes-
ogy, Chicago. sor of Electrical Engineering and the Director of the
He has several years of experience in the field of Electric Power and Power Electronics Center and
renewable energy sources as well as energy storage Grainger Laboratories, Illinois Institute of Technol-
systems. He was engaged in research and develop- ogy, Chicago, where he has established research and
ment projects on control of ac/dc electric drives. His teaching facilities in power electronics, motor drives, and vehicular power
current research interests include maximum power systems. He has been named as a Chicago Matters Global Visionary in 2009.
point tracking techniques for renewable energy systems as well as low-cost He is the principal author/coauthor of over 220 journals and conference papers
electric drive control in generating applications. as well as six books.
Mr. Milivojevic was one of the student team leaders that won “International Dr. Emadi was the founding General Chair of the First IEEE Vehicle Power
Future Energy Challenge 2005” with low-cost adjustable-speed motor drive and Propulsion Conference (VPPC’05) and is currently the Chair of the IEEE
solution. VPPC Steering Committee.
Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE
International Conference on Integration Technology
March 20 - 24, 2007, Shenzhen, China
Research on Field-Weakening Based on Reactive Power with

BLDC Motor for Electric Vehicle Application∗
Jinsong Kang Guoqing Xu
Department of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering,
TongJi University,Shanghai,P.R.C., TongJi University,Shanghai, P.R.C.
Email:[email protected] Email:[email protected]
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology
Ryerson University,Toronto,Canada ShenzhenP.R.C.
Bo Hu Zhouyun Zhang and Jun Gong

Department of Electrical Engineering, Ananda Drive Technology Corporation,
TongJi University, Shanghai, P.R.C. Shanghai, P.R.C.
Email:[email protected] Email:{zzy & gjun}@ananda.com.cn
Abstract— Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) motor with the and has good prospect[1]-[3].
high power density and the high efficiency characteristic is been At present, research on field-weakening of BLDC motor all
used to Electric Vehicle. The mathematical model of BLDC obtains the best electric current vector to control the inverter
motor under rotor flux linkage direction reference frame was
given. The chart of field-weakening vector control and basic to obtain certain effect under the different rotational speed ,
principle of field-weakening control strategy were analyzed. in the foundation of not modifying the electrical machinery
The theory of field-weakening based on reactive power with structure, resting on these characteristic curve such as the
BLDC motor was proposed. The drive system of field-weakening biggest torque/current path, the electric current and the volt-
based on reactive power using BLDC motor was designed. age limit ellipse .Vector control technology is not suitable
The experiment and result was test the validity of field-
weakening based on reactive power with BLDC for Electric for weak magnetic control of BLDC motor with trapezoidal
Vehicle Application. wave permanent magnetism, because not realizing electrical
Index Terms— BLDC motor; Electric vehicle; field- machinery complete decoupling[4]-[6]. This article proposes
weakening; reactive power; transient powerless torque theory from the basic electric and
magnet correlation, the theory is brought forward to meet
I. INTRODUCTION the phase advancing control method. Without complicated
The electric vehicle(EV) is the cleanenergy saving and vector transform, the method calculated current instruction
environmental protection transportation vehicle, which hav- and angle instruction based on the given torque and motor
ing no pollution, low heat radiation , the noise small, not speed feedback, and achieves high control precision in the
consumed the gasoline in the travel process. It applying many high speed field-weaken area.
kinds of energy, is called ”star of the tomorrow”. The drive
system is one power core of the electric vehicle, realizing the
vehicles power performance. Along with the new material II. BASIC PRINCIPLE OF FIELD - WEAKENING CONTROL
technology, the computer technology, the power electronics STRATEGY WITH BLDC MOTOR
technology and the microelectronic technology rapid de-
velopment, the electric vehicle mostly uses the alternating The permanent magnet is produced the constant excitation
current (AC) machine. It is the motive research hot spot that It magnetic field when not considering the temperature influ-
is the motive research hot spot that Brushless Direct Current ence of rotor permanent magnet. It is only can carry on
(BLDC) motor with the high power density and the high the equivalent field-weakening through the stator magnetic
efficiency characteristic is been used to EV. The motor has field to the air gap magnetic field. Basic principle of field-
inherit the predominant timing performance of the traditional weakening control strategy with BLDC motor all is uses
motor, as well the less volume, lighter weight, high efficiency the armature reactions of the stator current. Through the
less moment of inertia and without exciting wastage, and also stator magnetic potential and the rotor magnetic potential
discard the commutator and brush. Therefore it’s widely used composing, causing the air gap magnetic potential to reduce,
the induced potential of stator winding reduces. When ne-
∗ glecting the saturation effect of stator inductance parameter
1-4244-1092-4/07/$25.00 © 2007IEEE. 437

of BLDC motor, it’s mathematical model under rotor flux can be achieved when the demagnetization function of stator
linkage direction reference frame is like as the formula 1. current armature reaction is bigger than the increasing action
through phase change ahead of time. Field-weakening and
ud = R1 id + pψd − ωe ψq speed increasing is achieved by equivalent weakening the
uq = R1 iq + pψq + ωe ψd winding magnetic flux through the stator current armature
(1)
ψd = Ld id + ψm reaction. When BLDC motor using PWM control, the stator
ψq = Lq iq winding is at unceasingly the power on and off condition
periodically, the air gap magnetic flux is weakened along
In the formula, ud and uq represent direct axis compo-
with the rotor position changing[8].
nent and quadrature axis component of the stator voltage
respectively (V), id and iq represent direct axis component III. T HE THEORY OF FIELD - WEAKENING BASED ON
and quadrature axis component of the stator current respec- REACTIVE POWER WITH BLDC MOTOR
tively (A); ψd and ψq represent direct axis component and
quadrature axis component of the stator flux linkage (Wb); The electrical machinery power is composed by the active
ωq represents the synchronization angular speed (rad/s)Ld power and the reactive power[9]-[10]. In the static α − β
and Lq represent direct axis component and quadrature axis frame, the active power Pe and reactive power Qe of BLDC
component of the stator inductance (H); ψm represents rotor motor which with the stator winding opposite electromotive
permanent flux linkage (Wb) [7]. is respectively shown as formula 2,3:
The space vector chart of BLDC motor is shown as Figure 2
→ → → →
through stator voltage, stator current and stator flux linkage Pe = u1 · i1 ≈ e1 · i1 = |e1 | · |i1 | cos ϕ = |e1 | · |i1 | cos (β − α)
respective expressed by space vector form. The vector control = |e1 | · |i1 | (cos β cos α + sin β sin α) = eα · iα + eβ · iβ
of DLDC motor is advance control to the stator current (2)
under the rotor flux linkage direction frame. Field-weakening
control is achieved by reducing gap flux linkage , through id → → → →
direct axis component the stator current multiplying Ld (the Qe = u1 × i1 ≈ e1 × i1 = |e1 | · |i1 | sin ϕ = |e1 | · |i1 | sin (β − α)
direct axis inductance) counteract permanent flux linkage. = |e1 | · |i1 | (sin β cos α − cos β sin α) = eβ · iα − eα · iβ
(3)
q In the above formula, the electromagnetism torque com-
ponent Te and reactive power torque component Se can be
obtained by formula 4,5.
→ → Lq iq
ψs Is Pe eα · iα + eβ · iβ
iq Te = = (4)
ω1 ω1
→
ϕ ψm Qe eα · iβ − eα · iβ
β d Se = = (5)
ω1 ω1
θ The electromagnetism torque component Te and reactive
Ld id id A power torque component Se are scalars, not through the com-
plex vector transformation. Te and Se under different angle
Fig. 1. Chart of field-weakening vector control of BLDC motor. are calculated through simple 3/2 mathematics operation of
three-phase counter-electromotive force and the three-phase
In figure 1, ϕ is the angle between stator current vector current under the certain speed. Torque control command Te
and permanent magnetism rotor q’s axis, is called the inter- can directly obtained in operating mode of vehicle. If the
nal power factor angle; β is the angle between permanent relation between iα and iβ can be obtained through current
magnetism rotor flux linkage and the stator flux linkage, control strategy, reactive power torque component Se can
calling the power factor angle; θ is the phase angle between be calculated. The magnetic torque of BLDC motor is fully
rotor d axis and A phase winding middle line in the stator obtained by the phase advance control in low speed area and
winding reference. The influence of stator armature reaction field-weakening control with permanent over speed area. The
on rotor magnetic field increases magnetism after degausses principle of stator control based on reactive power theory for
first when the angle maintains at 90◦ about between the stator BLDC motor is described by formula 5.
magnetic field and the rotor magnetic field of BLDC motor,
causing each magnetic flux mean value maintenance to be iα 1 fα (θ) fβ (θ) Te
= 2 ·
extremely invariable, namely only changing its peak-to-peak iβ fα (θ) + fβ2 (θ) −fβ (θ) fα (θ) Se
value not to change its phase. Equivalent field weakening (6)
438
Fig. 2. Chart of field-weakening vector control of BLDC motor.
The instantaneous value of three-phase electric current is of the stator current opposite the counter electromotive force,
obtained by the counter-Clark transformation according to the which are calculated by the d-axis component and q-axis
above equation. Field weakening control based on reactive component of stator current based on reactive power theory.
power with BLDC motor includes operating mode of biggest The stator current peak value serves as the electric current
torque/Current ratio control in low speed and operating mode instruction value of the stator current with closed-loop
of weak magnetic control with permanent power in high control. The control block diagram of field-weakening based
speed. The operating mode using weak magnetic control on reactive power theory using square-wave electric current
in low speed is for fully using permanent magnetism mag- control BLDC motor is shown as figure 2
netic resistance torque, enhancing electrical machinery the In the chart, torque instructions is accepted by
torque/Current ratio; The operating mode using the weak communication control unit through the CAN from
magnetic control in high speed is in order to use the stator vehicle controller. The reactive power torque is calculated
current the straight axis component to realize the air gap by the control command and the speed .The electric current
magnetic flux equivalent weak magnetism, realizing weak function table and the field-weakening control angle function
magnetic control keeping permanent power. table are calculated by torque instruction signal and speed
signal. The PWM duty factor signal is to come from the
IV. T HE DRIVE SYSTEM OF FIELD - WEAKENING BASED ON
electric current function table and field-weakening control
REACTIVE POWER USING BLDC MOTOR
angle function table. The signal is also comes form the DC
The principle of field-weakening based on reactive power voltage signal, the phase current signal, the temperature
is realized by electrical current phase advance according signal, real-time trouble protect signal of drive system.
to the current torque instruction and the current rotational
speed. The angle ahead of time can be obtained by the angle
439
V. T HE EXPERIMENT AND RESULT OF FIELD - WEAKENING
CONTROL WITH BLDC MOTOR FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLE
In order to test the validity of field-weakening control
based on reactive power with BLDC motor. The experiments
are carried out in an AC drive system, which parameters
of the square-wave electric current control BLDC motor are
list as: rated power is 65kW, maximum speed is 11000 rpm,
maximum torque is 125Nm. The three-dimensional chart of
stator electric current instruction calculated on reactive power
theory is shown as 3. The three-dimensional chart of angle
instruction obtained from field-weakening based on reactive
power theory is shown as 4
The rotor position signal, the corresponding PWM profiles
and the electric current profiles according to field-weakening
control based on above instructions under different speed
experiment are respectively shown as 5 and 6
Fig. 4. Three-dimensional chart of angle instruction obtained from field-

weakening
Fig. 5. Experiment waveforms around 1000 rpm with field-weakening

control
Fig. 3. Three-dimensional chart of stator electric current instruction
VI. CONCLUSION
It is availability to field-weakening control based on re-
active power theory. When the BLDC motor is in the low
speed with permanent torque control operating mode, Under
the same speed and same peak value torque, experimental
result is shown to obtain 5 percent higher torque under the
same electric current, more to enhance the drive system
controllability and control precision. When in high speed
operating mode, the stator current peak can be reduced 15 ∼
20 percent under same torque in the field-weakening control
region, thus the system reliability and the power module
security enhance greatly. Fig. 6. Experiment waveforms around 10000 rpm with field-weakening
control
VII. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Dept. of Electric Engineer-
ing, Tongji University and Ananda Drive Technology Corpo- R EFERENCES
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[8] Shigeo Morimoto, et al.Effects and Compensation of Magnetic Satu-
ration in Flux-Weakening Controlled Permanent Magnet Synchronous
Motor Drives”, IEEE, Trans. Industry Applications, voL30, no.6,
pp.1632-1637, 1994
[9] H. Zeroug, et al. Dahnoun, Performance Prediction and Field Weak-
ening Simulation of a Brushless DC Motor, Power Electronics and
Variable Speed Drives, 18-19 September 2000, Conference Publication
No. 47 pp. 231-237, IEE 2000
[10] GK. Miti, et al. Field-weakening regime for brushless DC motors based
on instantaneous power theory, IEE Proc-Electn Power Appl, vol.148,
no.3, pp.265-271, May 2001
441
The 33rd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON)
Nov. 5-8, 2007, Taipei, Taiwan
An Efficient Simulation Technique for the Variable

Sampling Effect of BLDG Motor Applications
Chung-Wen Hung, Cheng-Tsung Lin, and Chih-Wen Liu
Department of Electrical Engineering
National Taiwan University
Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
d9092 1003gntu.edu.tw, d9292 1 007gntu.edu.tw, and cwliugcc.ee.ntu.edu.tw
Abstract- This paper proposes a variable sampling Previous researches on the variable sampling control have
simulation method using SIMULINK for brushless DC focused on multiple but fixed sampling rate problems [1-6].
motor (BLDC) drives with low-resolution position These controls offer improved performance if one considers
sensors (Hall sensors). Variable sampling is an interesting the slow sampling rate system. More recent results have
and important topic in discrete-time robust control. considered high performance servo systems [7], [8] and have
Nevertheless, there is no suitable simulation tool for the achieved smoother system responses utilizing the fact that
BLDC motor drive to simulate variable sampling. We control efforts are updated more frequently than the
present three subsystems for variable sampling measurements. Moore et al. [9] summarized these control
simulation: the first is continuous time model of BLDC strategies into an N-delay input/output control, and there is
motors, the second is variable sampling trigger, and the also a successful implementation [10]. However, the results
next is discrete time speed with variable sampling time directly addressing variable sampling rate are very limited.
constant estimator. Based on the variable sampling In 1993, Hori published an interesting result in [11] where
simulation method using SIMULINK, the simulation and the author considered a pure integrator system, and was able
implementation of variable sampling robust control will to transform the speed-position relation into a time-invariant
become more easily. system. The result is very neat. However, it is valid only for
the case of pure integrator system. The papers [12, 13 14 and
Keyword-variable sampling, discrete-time, SIMULINK 15] have derived the control laws using variable sampling
models. All previous researches presented robust controls in
I. INTRODUCTION multi-rate or variable sampling, but they did not present a
good simulation method for variable sampling. In previous
Variable sampling systems describe a class of systems whose research [22] used finite element (FE) analysis to model the
sensor outputs are available only at some situations not operation of BLDC motors and achieve the time-stepping,
specified by the sampling mechanism. For example, the but it only considered the fixed sampling rate. However, it is
situation arises when the measured variables are depended complex for variable sampling BLDC motors.
on the marks along the trajectory. The type of systems is
encountered in Brushless DC (BLDC) motor drives with low The computer simulation plays very important roles in
resolution position sensors, because the position research and development of power electronic devices
measurements are not available at the fixed sampling because of its high maneuverability, low cost and ability to
instance. speed up system implementation [16]. The famous
Mathworks Simulink/Matlab package is becoming more
The BLDC motor usually uses three or more Hall sensors wide spread amongst academia and industry [17]. The
to obtain rotor position and speed measurements. Without SIMULINK is a model operation programmer, and the
extra hardware, it would be necessary to inverse the time simulation model can be easily developed by addition of
difference between two successive Hall sensor signals to new sub-models to cater for various control functions [1 8].
obtain reliable speed measurement.
In this paper, we propose a variable sampling simulation
Notice that there are only a few sensors available to the method using SIMULINK for BLDC motor drives with low
motor; therefore, the measurement would be available only resolution position sensors (Hall sensors), and use three
at discrete instances. Depending on the number of poles, subsystems to achieve simulation.
there may be six or twelve sensor pulses per rotation. The
sampling time thus becomes a variable according to the II. CONTINUOUS TIME MODEL OF BLDC MOTOR
motor speed. Similar applications such as the computer disk
drives and the optical drives all have to extract the motion The continuous-time model of BLDC motors is similar to
information along the motion trajectory and result in speed permanent magnet DC motor. If only focus on trapezoidal
dependent sampling. These systems have uncertainty in control (means only two phases are turn on in the same time),
discrete-time model and require a servo controller that is not the characteristic equations of BLDC motors can be rewrite
sensitive to the sampling period.
1-4244-0783-4/07/$20.00 C 2007 IEEE 1175

as [19]: depends on the choice of a desired sliding surface s. For
stable control, the continuous-time VSC has to satisfy the
J6 + DoS= Te TZL ' (1) sliding condition ss < 0. A reaching law that satisfies the
sliding condition is
re = KT * i (2)
.(t) = -c sgn(s(t)) q s(t) , "> O. q > 0. (6)
V=R-i+L +Ke- (3) A discrete-time counterpart of the reaching law (6) can be
dt expressed as
Were is the motor speed, Te is the input torque from
c s(k + 1) - s(k) = -qTs(k) - eT sgn(s(k))
the windings, rL is the load torque, K, is torque constant, ,e>0,q>0,and 1-qT>0. (7)
Ke is back-emf constant, L is armature inductance, i is A method is proposed in [20], to achieve the following
armature current, V is terminal voltage, and R is terminal performances:
resistance. (PI) Starting from any initial state, the trajectory will move
monotonically toward the switching plane and cross it
From the above equations, the transfer function of BLDC in finite time.
motors is obtained (P2) Once the trajectory has crossed the switching plane, it
will cross the plane again in every successive sampling
period, resulting in a zigzag motion about the switching
(4) plane.
V (Ls+R)(Js+±D)±+KK (P3) The size of each successive zigzag step is
And, the block diagram of BLDC motors is shown in Fig. non-increasing and the trajectory stays within a
1. specified band.
Let s(k) = CTx(k), one can transform system (1) into a
normal form [20]:
x(k + 1) = Ox(k) + Fu(k) (8)
Where q, = (jDi i12] x = Kx] ,FT = [o 0 ...1]

L¢D21 (D22 X2
Fig. 1 The block diagram of BLDC motors CT = [C1 I], and (D)22 and x2 are scalars. Note that if [(D, F] is
controllable then [(1D (D)12] is also controllable, thus
maintaining the stability characteristics. From (4),
III. VARIABLE STRUCTURE CONTROL FOR BLDC s(k + 1) - s(k) = CTx(k + 1) - CTx(k) = CTDx(k) + CTFu(k) -
MOTORS CTx(k), and compare with (3) to obtain the control law for
To explain the importance of variable sampling simulation, fixed sampling discrete VSC.
the simulation results of fix sampling time control and
variable sampling time control, are shown in this section. u(k) = _(CTF) '[CT)X(k) - s(k) + qTs(k) + eT sgn(s(k))](9)
Here, the discrete-time variable structure control is chosen to
show the difference, and a suitable simulation tool for The reaching law (3) suggests a quasi-sliding mode band
variable sampling is necessary. (QSMB) [20] that achieves the DVSC performance (P2).
From (3):
The advance of variable structure control is robust, and
the transfer from continue-time to discrete-time also is well s(k + 1) = (1 - qT)s(k) - -T sgn(s(k)), 1 -qT > 0(10)
discussed in [20]. The variable sampling discrete-time
variable structure control also discuss in [21]. The theory is The state after time variable sampling interval Tk is
roughly described as following: described by the following equation.
x(k + 1) = P(Tk)x(k) + F(Tk)u(k), (11)
Consider a continuous time single-input system
x(t) =Fx(t) + Gu(t), and sample in a fixed period of T, one where 1)(Tk) = e k= L-'[(sI -F)-7'][21],
has the fixed rate equivalent discrete-time system
~ ~ ~
J
x(k + 1) = Ox(k) + Fu(k), (5) Fr',(Tk)

e
Tk) (12)
17(Tk) L
( Tk1 )eFK2)
Where (D = eFT, F JCFiGd2q, the input pair [(I,F] is
Tk
0
assumed controllable. The manipulated input u(k) is also Now, (sI - F)' = !S+DJ 1]. Let a DIJ and
known at every sampling instance. The Variable Structure s(st+eDlJ)t L ° ser
Controller (VSC) design for the continuous-time system take inverse Laplace transform
1176
time constant estimator.
s(s+ a ) (i e )]
(D~(Tk) L
ii11aIaTa
s+ a eL
0 1
= l¢ (D12(Tk)
L021 (22(Tk)j
Using Eq. (5), one has the control law [21]
u(k) _0 X(C =(CT_r(Tk )1 [CT x(_)
p(T)x-Cx+
CTX(k)+
qlTkCTX(k,)+ eT. sgn(CTx (k))]
(14)
=-(clrrl(T) + F2(77)) {r(Cl 1I + 02Q1)x1k() +
(C1P1j2(T) + 22(Tk))x2(k)] - s(k)
Fig. 3. All blocks of variable sampling simulation.
q T. s (k) + eT. s gn(s (k))}
Note, In the Eq(14), the sampling time Tk is a variable. A. Continuous Time Model of BLDC Motors
However, the variable sampling variable structure
control(VSC) can guarantee stable system response, the In continuous time model of the BLDC motor, we not
simulated results for brushless DC motor are shown in Fig. 2 only create transfer functions of BLDC motors according to
[21]. The oscillation is caused by the asynchronization (1)-(3), but also consider the influence from PWM scheme.
between the controller system clock and the actual sampling The voltage command (V*) is compared triangle wave to
feedback, which is depended on the motor speed. In Fig. 2, create the gate signal. Then, the gate signal dot the voltage
the rate for the fixed sampling controller is set to 600 Hz of DC bus (320V) to produce PWM waveform of inverter.
(suitable for 3000 rpm) and 4 kHz (the same as the system The detail block is shown in below.
clock) with the speed command set to 200 rpm. Contras,
variable sampling VSC achieves a stable and fast response. 32 1 {
V. Co , > t Transftff Fcrn, 7Tans!O cRM
Fig. 4. Blocks of the continuous time model of the BLDC motor
B. Variable Sampling Trigger

C)0'; 1IS
a The sampling time is a variable according to the BLDC
t/0 motor speed, and the 4 poles BLDC consists of 12 Hall
feedback signals per mechanical revolution, means there is a
hall sensor per 2ff /12 radian. There must be a sample
trigger, when the BLDC motor passed through 2ff 12
Tim (sc) radians.
Fig. 2. Simulated comparison between variable sampling VSC and fixed
sampling VSC (in T=1/600 and 1/4000 sec.) at speed command= 200 rpm.
To simulate the variable sampling phenomenon, we
From above discuss, variable sampling is an interesting integral rotor speed to angel, and divide angel by ff16.
and important topic in discrete-time robust control, so a When the angel of BLDC motors is divisible by ff / 6, the
simulation method for variable sampling system is necessary. trig should be produced for the discrete time speed and
However, there is no a suitable simulation tool for BLDC variable sampling time constant estimator. Unfortunately, the
motor system to simulate variable sampling rate, a method in remainder may be equal to zero in SIMULINK, because the
SIMULINK to simulate variable sampling rate system is continuous simulation is based on the equivalent of very fast
proposed in next section. discrete time system. So, we use the boundary to catch the
moment which the angel of BLDC motors is divisible by
IV. SIMULATION OF VARIABLE SAMPLING RATE ff16.
In SIMULINK, there are continuous and fix sampling rate

discrete mode, but there is no suitable mode for variable LA f 1 x
sampling rate of BLDC. A simulation method for variable smplng trigger mundz=j Wt
sampling rate based on time domain simulation of Fig. 5. Blocks of variable sampling trigger.
SIMULINK is proposed, as shown in Fig. 4. The simulation
tool includes three parts: the first is continuous time model C. Discrete Time Speed and Variable Sampling Time
of BLDC motors, the second is variable sampling trigger, Constant Estimator
and the next is the discrete time speed and variable sampling
1177
The sampling trigger trigs the sample and hold block to 350
sample speed, then the variable sampling time interval can 300
Duty ratio = 10%
be calculated by sampled time speed, as shown in Fig. The
unit of speed is rpm and the included angles between 250
every hall sensors are 2ff/12, so time interval is a)

CD
200
shown in below
150
1/12 5
w(k)= T(k)
*60 =
T(k)
(15) 100
50
5
T(k) = (16) 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9
wtk) Time (sec) x 10-,
Fig. 7. PWM waveform of the continuous time model of the BLDC motor
We add PWM module in input voltage, so there are some

ripple in the waveform of the BLDC motor. Although the
ripple is too small to be observed in Fig. 8, the continuous
time model achieves the correct response of the BLDC
motor.
120C
I u
] -44
-I~~11(300160-'l2) 1000
/ 0 0 0 0 ~~~~~~10%
Voltage
Initial Condition
800
Fig 6. Blocks of the discrete time speed and variable sampling time E
constant estimator
600
In order to avoid dividing by zero, we set the initial speed
as 1 rpm, and initial time constant as the sample time in the 400
lowest controllable speed.
200
V. SIMULATION RESULT 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 .1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
Time (sec)
The ratings of the BLDC motor under study are listed in

Table I, and the voltage command is 32 V (duty ratio =10%). Fig. 8. Open loop response of the continuous time model of the BLDC
In this section, we present several simulation results to show motor
that our simulation method can achieve variable sampling
simulation in SIMULINK. We show the simulation results of discrete time speed and
variable sample time in Fig. 9. In order to observe the affect
TABLE I of variable sampling, we enlarge Fig. 9 form 0.01 second to
MOTOR RATINGS 0.1 second, and show in Fig. 10.
Specifications Units
Number of poles 4 tuuul N 600
|
U
x la-,
Moment of inertia, J 0.000195982 Kg-M2 1400F 400
Viscous damping constant, D 0.000001 N-m-s/rad
1200 200
Torque constant, KT 0.28383 V-s/rad
E-1000 000 E
Back-EMF constant, Ke 0.28383 V-s/rad E
° 800 800 E
Armature inductance, L 24 mH E
X
Un
Terminal resistance, R 5.17 Q 600
Speed
--60C
Rated Speed 3000 rpm 40C
Sample Time
40C
The Voltage of DC Bus 320 V
20C0 200
The continuous time model of the BLDC motor cloud - -I I I 1 I I \,
produces pure PWM waveform to transfer function of the 0 01 02 03 04 05

Time (sec)
06 07 08 09 1
BLDC motor, as shown in Fig. 7. When we take the Fig. 9. Open loop response of the discrete time speed and variable sampling
operating voltage 32V in open loop simulation, the supply time constant estimator.
voltage becomes 10% duty ratio of the Voltage of DC bus.
In Fig. 10, the sample time of the BLDC motor is
decreasing, when the speed of the BLDC motor is increasing.
So, the discrete time speed and variable sample time are very
important in robust control for the BLDC motor drive.
1178
70Cr approach," Automatica, vol. 28, no. 1, 1992, pp. 35-44.
[2] H. In and C. Zhang, "A multirate digital controller for model
matching," Automatica, vol. 30, no. 6, 1994, pp. 1043-1050.
[3] P. Colaneri and G. De Nicolao, "Multirate LQG control of
,Qf
continuous-time stochastic systems," Automatica, vol. 31, no. 4, 1995,
pp. 591-596.
au)Q1
au
[4] M.J. Er and B.D.O. Anderson, "Design of reduced-order multirate
Cn
output linear functional observer-based compensator," Automatica, vol.
31, no. 2, 1995, pp. 237-242.
Speec [5] M. De La Sen, "The reachability and observability of hybrid multirate
Sample Time sampling linear systems", Computers and Mathematical Applications,
vol. 31, no. 1, 1996, pp. 109-122.
[6] K.G. Arvanitis and Kalogeropoulos, "Stability robustness of LQ
00 C02 003 004 005
Time (sec)
C06 C07 C08 009 01 optimal regulators based on multirate sampling of plant output,"
Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, vol. 97, no. 2, May,
Fig. 10. Simulated variable sampling speed and time constant. 1998, pp. 299-337.
[7] T. Hara and M. Tomizuka, "Multi-rate controller for hard disk drive
with redesign of state estimator," Proceedings of 1998 American
The system block including the variable sampling Control Conference, June 24-26, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.,
simulator is proposed in this paper, and the simulation 1998, pp. 3033-3037.
results are showed in Fig. 11 and Fig. 2. The system block [8] S.E. Baek and S.H. Lee, "Design of a multi-rate estimator and its
combine the variable sampling VSC and variable sampling application to a disk drive servo system," Proceedings of 1999
American Control Conference, San Diego, CA, June, 1999, pp.
simulator, and use a 'sample & hold' block and a constant to 3640-3644.
implement fixed sampling VSC. From Fig. 2, the success of [9] K.L. Moore, S.P. Bhattacharyya and M. Dahleh, "Capabilities and
the variable sampling simulator is demonstrable. limitations of multirate control schemes," Automatica, vol. 29, no. 41,
1993, pp. 941-95.
[10] H. Fujimoto, A. Kawamura and M. Tomizuka, "Generalized digital
redesign method for linear feedback system based on N-delay control,"
IEEEIASME Trans. on Mechatronics, vol. 4, no. 2, June 8, 1999, pp.
101-10.
[11] Y Hori, "Robust and adaptive control of a servomotor using low
precision shaft encoder," Proceedings IEEE IECON'93, Nov. 15-19,
Hawaii, 1993, pp. 73-78.
[12] A.M. Phillips, "Multi-rate and variable-rate estimation and control of
systems with limited measurements with applications to information
storage devices," Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Mechanical
Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1995.
[13] A.M. Phillips and M. Tomizuka, "Multi-rate estimation and control
under time-varying data sampling with applications to information
storage devices," Proceedings 1996 American Control Conference,
Seattle, Washington, June, 1996, pp. 4151- 4155.
[14] Jia-Yush Yen, Yang-Lin Chen and Masayoshi Tomizuka , "Variable
Sampling Rate Controller Design for Brushless dc Motor,"
Proceedings of the 41st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control,
Las Vegas, December, 2002, pp. 462-467.
[15] Lilit Kovudhikulrungsri and Takafumi Koseki, "Precise Speed
Estimation From a Low-Resolution Encoder by Dual-Sampling-Rate
Observer," IEEEIASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol. 11, no. 6,
600 Hz Samplin December, 2006.
Fig. 11. System Blocks of variable sampling VSC and Fixed sampling VSC, [16] Xiaorong Xie, Qiang Song, Gangui Yan, and Wenhua Liu,
which implement for BLDC. "MATLAB-based simulation of three-level PWM inverter-fed motor
speed control system," Proceedings of Applied Power Electronics
Conference and Exposition, 2003, pp. 1105-1110.
VI. CONCLUSION [17] C.D.French and P.P.Acarnley, "Simulink real time controller
implementation in a DSP based motor drive system," IEEE
This paper proposes a variable sampling simulation Colloquium on DSP Chips in Real Time Measurement and Control,
1997, pp. 311-315.
method using SIMULINK for BLDC motor drives with low [18] K. L. Shi, T. F. Chan, and Y. K. Wong, "Modelling of the three-phase
resolution position sensors (Hall sensors). We present three induction motor using SIMULINK," Proceedings of IEEE Conference
subsystems for variable sampling simulation: the first is on Electric Machines and Drives, 1997, pp. WB3/6. 1 - WB3/6.3.
continuous time model of BLDC motors, the second is [19] Gwo-Ruey Tu and Rey-Chue Hwang, "Optimal PID speed control of
brush less DC motors using LQR approach", Proceedings of IEEE
variable sampling trigger, and the next is discrete time speed Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2004, pp. 473-478.
and variable sampling time constant estimator. Based on the [20] W.B. Gao, Y Wang and A. Homaifa, "Discrete-time variable structure
variable sampling simulation method using SIMULINK, the control system," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 42,
simulation and implementation of variable sampling robust no. 2, Apr. 1995.
[21] Chung-Wen Hung, Cheng-Tsung Lin, and Chih-Wen Liu, "A Variable
control will become more real, efficient and easily. Sampling Controller for Brushless DC Motor Drives with Low
Resolution Position Sensors", IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics,
2007.
[22] Osama A. Mohammed, S. Liu, and Z. Liu, "A Phase Variable Model of
Brushless dc Motors Based on Finite Element Analysis and Its
Coupling With External Circuits", IEEE Trans. on Industrial
Electronics, pp. 1576-1579, 2004.
REFERENCES
[1] H.M. Al-Rahmani and G.F. Franklin, "Multirate control: a new
1179
The 7th International Conference on Power Electronics WED1·4
October 22-26, 2007 / EXCO, Daegu, Korea
A Simple Fault Detection of the Open-Switch Damage in BLDC Motor Drive Systems
Jung-Oae Lee, Byoung-Gun Park, Tae-Sung Kim, Ji-Su Ryu, and Oong-Seok Hyun
Hanyang University
Oept. of Electrical Engineering
17 Haengdang-dong Seongdong-gu, Seoul, 133-791
Korea
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract-This paper proposes a novel fault detection the interval of a mode because the error times of two excited
algorithm for a brushless DC (BLOC) motor drive system. phases increase identically within a mode. And this method
This proposed method is configured without the additional cannot avoid decreases of the control performance until the
sensor for fault detection and identification. The fault detection fault identification. To solve these problems, in novel
and identification are achieved by a simple algorithm using the proposed fault detection method, it is possible to detect fault
operating characteristic of the BLOC motor. The drive system
within the maximum one mode and avoid decreases in the
after the fault identification is reconfigured by four-switch
topology connecting a faulty leg to the middle point of control performance.
DC-link using bidirectional switches. This proposed method can This paper proposes a fault tolerant system that can quickly
also be embedded into existing BLOC motor drive systems as a recover the control performance by fast fault detection time
subroutine without excessive computational effort. The and reconfiguration of system topology [12]. This method is
feasibility of a novel fault detection algorithm is validated in also achieved without using additional sensor and a simple
simulation. algorithm, as it uses the operating characteristic of BLOC
motor drive. This method can be embedded into existing
I. INTRODUCTION BLOC motor drive system as a subroutine without excessive
computational effort. The proposed fault tolerant system
The brushless OC (BLOC) motor is attracting much performs the follow tasks:
interest due to its high efficiency, high power factor, high
torque, simple control, and lower maintenance requirement 1) fault detection;
[1], [2]. Moreover, the use of an automated and large drive 2) fault identification;
system of BLOC motor in industrial field is increasing with 3) fault isolation;
the development of industrial technology. The reliability of 4) reconfiguration of hardware and software.
the drive system in many applications is becoming extremely
important. When the faults in the drive system occur in The feasibility of the proposed novel fault detection
industrial field such as aerospace, military, electrical vehicle, algorithm is validated in simulation.
and robot arms, it can lead to serious consequences. For
example, when one of the faults does occur in the practical II. BLDC MOTOR DRIVE SYSTEM
applications above, the drive operation has to be stopped for a
nonprogrammed maintenance schedule. The cost of this Generally, the BLOC motor drive system can be modeled
schedule can be high and this justifies the development of as an electrical equivalent circuit that consists of a resistance,
fault tolerant control strategies for improving reliability. an inductance, and back-EMF per phase. The electrical
In recent years, several papers for faults in motor drive equivalent circuit and drive performance of this system are
systems have been published using the following schemes: shown in Fig. 1.
r
fault detection and identification methods [3]-[6],
reconfiguration schemes for isolating faulty power devices
[7], [8], and fault tolerant schemes [9]-[11]. However, most 8~
existing fault detection and identification methods have
problems because the fault detection time takes at least one Va
fundamental period, the process for detecting faults is Vdc
l
complex and/or schemes to identify faults are inadequate. In
addition, these methods use additional sensor for fault
detection. Among them, a fault tolerant strategy for BLOC
8
1
motor drive was suggested in [11]. This method introduced a
3-Phase Irwerter BWCMotor
fault detection algorithm. However, in this method, the fault
detecting time for the fault identification must be longer than Fig. 1. The electrical equivalent circuit ofBLDC motor drive system
978-1-4244-1872-5/08/$25.00 ©20081EEE 733

The 7th International Conference on Power Electronics
October 22-26, 2007 I EXCO, Daegu, Korea
th
(a)
Model Mode 2 Mode 3 Mode 4 Mode5 Mode6

wI th
Fig. 2. Waveform ofback-EMFs, phase currents, and the developing torque.
As shown in Fig. 2, BLOC motor has a trapezoid-shaped

back-EMF. Because back-EMF must synchronize with
square wave currents, square wave currents are injected from
the same period. The BLOC motor drive system is operated
by exciting two phases among the three phases. Two Fig. 3. Current waveforms under open faults in Mode 1. (a) The upper switch
switches are only operated in one mode. The proposed fault fault. (b) The lower switch fault.
tolerant system in this paper is achieved by characteristic of
phase current in BLOC motor drive. The voltage equation of
A. The Open Fault ofthe Upper Switch (S]) in Mode 1
three phases is given by
As shown in Fig. 3(a), when the open fault of the upper
switch (S]) in Mode 1 happens, even if the lower switch (S6)
operates normally, currents of phase A and B do not appear.
Moreover, when the lower switch (S2) operates normally by
switching pattern in Mode 2, currents of phase A and C also
do not appear due to the open fault of the upper switch (S]).
As a result, if the open fault of the upper switch (S]) occurs in
The torque equation is given by Mode 1, phase currents do not appear in Mode 1 and 2.
T = eo ·io +e h ·ih +e c .( .
B. The Open Fault ofthe Lower Switch (86) in Mode 1
e (2)
(j)m As shown in Fig. 3(b), when the open fault of the lower
switch (S6) happens in Mode 1, even if the upper switch (8])
where vall' V hll ' and V m are phase voltages. R a , R h , and R c are operates normally, phase currents of phase A and B do not
phase resistances. (, iI>' and (. are phase currents. La' L h , and appear.I-bwever, \\hen the lower switch (82 ) operates normally
L e are phase inductances. ea , el>' and ec are phase back-EMFs. by switching pattern in Mode 2, currents of phase A and C can
flow despite the open fault of the lower switch (86 ), As a
(£m is rotor speed.
result, switch (8]) and (82 ) operates normally in Mode 2, even
if the open fault of the lower switch (86) occurs in Mode 1.
III. CHARACTERISTIC ANALYSIS OF OPEN FAULT
IN BLOC MOTOR DRIVE SYSTEM
IV. PROPOSED FAULT DETECTION ALGORITHM
FOR OPEN FAULT
The BLOC motor drive system is operated by exciting two
phases among the three phases. When the open fault of a
switch happens, the current waveform appears differently As shown in Fig. 2, the operation of the BLOC motor
according to the position ofa faulty switch. In this work, only drive system is classified into the six-mode. And the current
the open circuit damage of a switch (S]) and (S6) will be waveform appears differently according to the state of each
considered. Also, the effect of this fault type in any other mode. This characteristic of the current waveform offers a
device is assumed to be symmetrical. For comprehension of simple algorithm to detect fault. The fault detection method
the open fault of the switch, Fig. 3 shows the waveform of employed each FaultJlag signal that represents the fault
two phase currents in case of the open fault of the upper detection and identification. The fault detection and
switch (S]) or lower switch (S6) in Mode 1. identification method that applies the FaultJlag signals is
shown by the flowcharts in Fig. 4.
734
October 22-26, 2007 / Exeo, Daegu, Korea
detection given by
Fault detectim
I
Yes: Flag 1 Next~ode,andaftercountb
+
Next mode
IF lirE;f- iactl > th THEN upper switch/ault
ELSE lower switch/ault
1
~ Table I shows how fault identification under open fault is
represented in the six-mode conversion. As a result, the
~-Nl
proposed fault detection algorithm for open faults is achieved
Yes: Flag 1 Yes: Flag 2
by FaultJlag signals without additional sensor.
~ ~
Fd deledim II Geneni opention I '1
l'--U-pper-IWl-·-tdl-fil-Dl-t Ir-Lower--IWI-'-·t-ch-faolt-----,I TABLE I
THE FAULT STATE OF SWITCHES IN THE SIX-MODE CONVERSION
(a) (b)
Fig. 4. (a) Flowcharts for the fault detection method. (b) Flowcharts for the fault
identification. Flag 1 Flag 2 Fault
Mode Conversion
(Previous mode) (Next mode) Switch
These flowcharts are classified into two parts: Fault High Low Sj
Mode 1 -+ Mode 2
detection and identification. After the open fault of switch, High High S6
the difference between reference and actual current increases High Low S6
because the actual current cannot follow the reference current. Mode 2 -+ Mode 3
High High Sj
If current value of lirE;f - iactl is larger than the fixed threshold High Low Sj
value (th), an error is detected. The others judge by normal Mode 3 -+ Mode 4
operation. The error detection can be achieved using this
High High S2
High Low S2
difference as follows: Mode 4 -+ Mode 5
High High Sj
High Low Sj
IF lirej - iactl > th THEN error Mode 5 -+ Mode 6
High High S4
ELSE normal High Low S4
Mode 6 -+ Mode 1
High High Sj
The fault detecting time is given by
v. ISOLATION AND RECONFIGURATION
2 1
Tjault = K x---x- - . (3) This paper proposes a novel fault detection and
pXOJrej Mode identification method. To validate the reliability of this
algorithm, existing isolation and reconfiguration method is
where Ttault is the fault detecting time. K is the sensitivity for introduced into [10]. The reconfigured system by the isolation
faults. p is the number of pole. lhref is the reference speed. of the faulty phase is shown in Fig. 5.
And then if the error time detecting the error continuously
is longer than the fault detecting time, the proposed system
generates FaultJlag 1 signal. The generated FaultJlag J
signal represents fault condition. The algorithm for the fault
-----,
NtII'IIUIl14
I
diagnosis given by
s)
I
IF (count a> T.fault) THEN Fault.flag 1
ELSE normal Bidl1ectiona1 I
-8Witch I I
~Vdc I sJ
where count is the error time detecting the error continuously. I I
After the FaultJlag 1 signal is generated, the identification I I I
'- J
of the faulty switch is obtained from FaultJlag 2 signal.
FaultJlag 1 siganl represents only fault condition after count Fig. 5. The reconfigured system by the bidirectional switch and removing
a. And when the mode is converted to next mode, faulty the switching signal of the faulty phase.
switch is identified through FaultJlag 2 signal after count b.
This signal is decided, in accordance with value of lirej - iactl. After identification of the faulty phase is achieved by
The algorithm for this fault identification method after fault FaultJlag 2 signal, the reconfiguration scheme is achieved
735
October 22-26, 2007 / EXCO, Daegu, Korea
by four-switch topology using bidirectional switches. When TABLE II

RATINGS AND PARAMETERS OF BLDC MOTOR
the fault of a switch is identified, the bidirectional switch of
the faulty phase is fired in order to connect the faulty phase to
the midpoint of the DC-link and the switching signals of the Rated Voltage V 300 [V]
faulty phase are removed at the same time. The system after Rated Torque Te 0.662 [Nm]
isolating the faulty phase is operated by four-switch
three-phase BLDC motor drives has been proposed in [12]. Rated Speed Nr 3000 [rpm]
Because this control scheme has irregular voltage utilization,
during the half DC-link voltage period, the rate of current
Resistance Rs 11.9 [il]
incensement is less than the full DC-link voltage period. This Inductance Ls 2.07 [mR]
irregular current shape can cause torque ripple, but it can be
Back-EMF Constant Ke 22.9 [V/rpm]
controllable by adjusting hysterisis band size. Although the
fault tolerant system has reduced performances and reduced Poles P 4
working time under fault, this aspect is considered to be a
compromise.
VI. OVERALL FAULT TOLERANT SYSTEM la : Ib : Ie
--------------~-----------(_----------l----------------r---i------
The overall structure of the proposed fault tolerant drive

system is shown in Fig. 6. A novel proposed algorithm is
,~
applied to block of fault detection and diagnosis. Therefore
open fault diagnosis is achieved by the proposed system in
this block, as stated above.
In the case of a short-circuit fault in one or two power
switches of the same leg, the control strategy interrupts the
switches command after the fast active fuses blowout and (a)
isolates the respective inverter leg.
Wlf~~
(
v
\7
HIIIl
:1 C';r\j
(b)
Fig. 7. Simulation results of the existing method by difference of reference
and actual current. (a) Faulty current waveforms. (d) Rotor speed.
Fig. 7 shows simulation results in the existing method

when the open fault occurs at 24.8ms. As shown in Fig. 7(a),
although the open fault occurs at 24.8ms, existing method
Fig. 6. The overall structure of the proposed fault tolerant drive system. cannot immediately detect it. The open fault condition is
detected after about one fundamental period. Therefore the
VII. SIMULATION RESULTS method of existing system becomes unstable and requires a
long time in order to detection. However the system of novel
In order to verify the developed fault tolerant system, a proposed method is stable and reduces the detection time
computer simulation was performed along with the existing without sensors and complex detection algorithm.
fault tolerant system [11]. Simulations are performed for the Fig. 8 shows the simulation results of the novel proposed
BLDC motor with ratings of parameters in Table II. In this method by FaultJlag signals when the open fault of the
work, only the open fault of switch (5J) will be considered. upper switch (5 J ) happens in mode 1. The open fault occurs at
Also, the effect of this type of fault in any other devices is 24.8ms. As shown in Fig. 8(a), after the open fault, FaultJlag
assumed to be symmetrical. And the same simulation 1 signal represents fault condition and the fault identification
condition of existing method applies to novel proposed is achieved by FaultJlag 2 signal. After the fault
method. First of all, the existing fault tolerant system was identification, the faulty phase is promptly disconnected by
simulated. removing switching signals.
736
October 22-26, 2007 I EXCO, Daegu, Korea
VIII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a novel fault detection algorithm is

investigated to improve the reliability of the BLOC motor
drive system. The proposed method is based on FaultJlag
signals. And the proposed fault tolerant system quickly
recovers the control performance by short detecting time and
reconfiguration of system topology, and then continuous free
operation of the drive after the fault is available.
In comparison to the existing fault tolerant methods, the
proposed method can identify fast fault condition without
sensors for fault detection and identification.
(a)
Simulation results have demonstrated the feasibility of the
proposed drive system continuous operation under the fault.
When the proposed fault tolerant system is applied to related
:~ : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : I:~: - - - - -r----------+-------
applications of the BLOC motor drives, the reliability and
robustness ofthe BLOC motor drive system is improved with
low cost.
: counta cow;tb ,
o.10m------------------------1-------------------------j-----------------~1-------------------------i------------------------
REFERENCE
oMo-------------------'---j---r-'---------I------
[1] P.Pillay and P. Freere, "Literature survey of permanent magnet ac motors
and drives," in Proc. IEEE lAS Rec., pp. 74-84, 1989
20.00
[2] 1. R. Hendershot and T. J. E. Miller, Design of Brushless
(b) Permanent-Magnet Motors. Oxford, UK: Oxford Science, 1994.
[3] R. Spee and T. Lipo, "Remedial strategies for brushless dc drive failures,"
IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 259-266, Mar./Apr. 1990.
[4] Kenneth Scot Smith, Li Ran and Jim Penman, "Real-Time Detection of
Intermittent Misfiring in a Voltage-Fed PWM Inverter Induction-Motor
:~ : : : : : : : : : :I: : : : : : : : : : :r:~: : ::::::::1::::::::::::::::::r:::::::::::: Drive," IEEE Trans. Ind. Eletron., vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 468-476, Aug. 1997.
[5] R. Peuget, S. Courtine, and J. P. Rognon, "Fault Detection and Isolation on
a PWM Inverter by Knowledge-Based Model," IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat.,
O~ L ~jt~~J ~~~~----------------.------------------------
vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 1318-1326, Nov.lDec. 1998.
[6] R. L. A. Ribeiro, C. B. Jacobina, E. R. C. da Silva and A. M. N. Lima,
"Fault Detection of Open-Switch Damage in Voltage-Fed PWM Motor
Drive Systems," IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 587-593,
Mar. 2003.
:: ------------------1---------1-- ------I-----------------!------------- [7] 1. R. Fu and T. Lipo, "A Strategy to Isolate the Switching Device Fault ofa
2000
Current Regulated Motor Drive," in Con! Rec. IEEE-lAS Annu. Meeting,
vol. l,pp. 1015-1020,1993.
(c) [8] S. Bolognani, M. Zigliotto and M. Zordan, "Innovative Remedial Strategies
for Inverter Faults in IPM Synchronous Motor Drives," IEEE Trans.
Energy Conversion, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 306-312, June. 2003.
Wrt!f~ [9] Silverio Bolognani, Marco Zordan and Mauro Zigliotto, "Experimental
, . ~v, ; Fault-Tolerant Control ofa PMSM Drive," IEEE Trans. Ind. Eletron., vol.
_M_ ---T-------r------~------+---------+----- 47, no. 5, pp. 1134-1141, Oct. 2000.
[10] R. L. A. Ribeiro, C. B. Jacobina and E. R. C. da Silva, "Fault-Tolerant
Voltage-Fed PWM Inverter AC Motor Drive Systems," IEEE Trans. Ind.
Applicat., vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 439-446, Apr. 2004.
[11] Byoung-Gun Park, Tae-Sung Kim, Ji-Su Ryu; Byoung-Kuk Lee,
Dong-Seok Hyun," Fault Tolerant System under Open Phase Fault for
BLDC Motor Drives," IEEE PESC., pp.18-22, June. 2006.
[12] Byoung-Kuk Lee, Tae-Hyung Kim and M. Ehasani, "On the Feasibility of
Four-Switch Three-Phase BLDC Motor Drives for Low Cost Commercial
0.00 Applications: Topology and Control," IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol.
18, no. l,pp. 164-172, Jan. 2003.
(d)
Fig. 8. Simulation results of the proposed method by Fault_ flags. (a)
Current waveforms. (b) Counting time. (c) The fault detecting and
identification time. (d) Rotor speed.
Consequently, current ia suddenly drops to zero, while a

neutral current begins to flow by bidirectional switch, with i b
and ic. In this method, as shown in Fig. 8(d), the actual rotor
speed follows the reference speed after the fault tolerant.
From the detailed investigation of the simulation results, the
feasibility is fully verified.
737
1216 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 42, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2006
An Improved Microcontroller-Based Sensorless

Brushless DC (BLDC) Motor Drive
for Automotive Applications
Jianwen Shao, Member, IEEE
Abstract—The direct back-electromotive-force (EMF) detection without Hall or other type position sensors. The back-EMF zero
method previously described in a sensorless brushless dc (BLDC) crossing of this third floating phase can be used to determine
motor-drive system (Proc. IEEE APEC, 2002, pp. 33–38) syn- the commutation sequence. Both Erdman [2] and Uzuka and
chronously samples the motor back EMF during the pulsewidth-
modulation (PWM) off time without the need to sense or Uzuhashi [3] originally proposed the method of sensing back
reconstruct the motor neutral. Since this direct back-EMF-sensing EMF to build a virtual neutral point that will, in theory, be
scheme requires a minimum PWM off time to sample the back- at the same potential as the center of a Y wound motor and
EMF signal, the duty cycle is limited to something less than 100%. then to sense the difference between the virtual neutral and
In this paper, an improved direct back-EMF detection scheme that the voltage at the floating terminal. However, when using a
samples the motor back EMF synchronously during either the
PWM on time or the PWM off time is proposed to overcome the chopping drive, the pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) signal is
problem. In this paper, some techniques for automotive applica- superimposed on the neutral voltage, inducing a large amount of
tions, such as motor-rotation detection, and current sensing are electrical noise on the sensed signal. Moreover, the magnitude
proposed as well. Experimental results are presented. of the signal is often outside the common mode input range
Index Terms—Back-electromotive-force (EMF) detection, cur- of the comparator used to sense the back EMF. To sense this
rent sensing, motor-rotation detection, sensorless brushless dc properly requires a lot of filtering and attenuation. The filtering
(BLDC). causes unwanted delay in the signal. The attenuation is required
to bring the signal down to the allowable common mode range
I. I NTRODUCTION of the sensing circuit. The result is a poor signal-to-noise ratio
of a very small signal, especially at startup where it is needed
T HERE ARE many motors inside a modern car with the
majority of them brushed dc motors. In recent years,
the brushless dc (BLDC) motor is receiving more interest for
most. Consequently, this method tends to have a narrow speed
range and poor startup characteristics. To reduce the switching
automotive applications. This is due to the higher reliability/ noise, the back-EMF integration [4] and third harmonic voltage
longevity, lower maintenance, and quieter operation that BLDC integration [5] were introduced. The integration approach has
has compared to its brushed dc counterpart. Over the last the advantage of reduced switching-noise sensitivity. However,
decade, continuing improvements in power semiconductors they still have a problem at low speed since attenuation cannot
and controller ICs as well as the permanent-magnet brushless be avoided.
motor production have made it possible to manufacture reliable A direct back-EMF-sensing scheme in which back-EMF
cost-effective solutions for a broad range of adjustable speed signals can be directly extracted for each phase without sensing
applications. As matter of fact, BLDC motors are being de- the motor neutral point is presented in [6]. This is done by
signed in or currently used in power steering, engine cooling synchronously detecting the back EMF of the floating phase
fan, fuel/water pump, air-conditioning compressor, and heating, during the high-side-switch PWM off time. This back-EMF-
ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) blower motors. sensing scheme has advantages over the conventional method
For three-phase BLDC motors, six-step commutation with [2]–[5]. There is no attenuation in the back-EMF signal, and
120◦ conduction time allows the current to flow in only two no high common mode voltage issue since the motor neutral
phases at any one time. This leaves the third phase available voltage is not used for zero-crossing comparison. Precise back-
for sensing back EMF, which indicates the rotor position. Since EMF zero-crossing detection can be achieved without low pass
the back EMF is directly related to the rotor position, sensing filtering. As a result, this control method has wider speed range
the back EMF will enable the controller to drive the motor and better startup performance.
This direct back-EMF-sensing scheme has been imple-
Paper IPCSD-06-055, presented at the 2005 Industry Applications Society mented into a low-cost microcontroller [6], and it has been
Annual Meeting, Hong Kong, October 2–6, and approved for publication in the used for various applications [7], [8]. Certain improvements
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS by the Industrial Drives of this method, such as reducing power loss in the MOSFETs
Committee of the IEEE Industry Applications Society. Manuscript submitted
for review October 15, 2005 and released for publication June 1, 2006. This for low-voltage applications, reducing time delaying in high-
work was supported primarily by the ERC Program of the National Science voltage applications, were reported in [8]. However, since this
Foundation under Award EEC-9731677. direct back-EMF-sensing scheme requires a minimum PWM
The author is with the STMicroelectronics Power System Applications
Laboratory, Schaumburg, IL 60173 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). “off” time, the duty cycle is limited to something less than
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIA.2006.880888 100%. In many automotive applications, the desire is to run the
0093-9994/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
SHAO: IMPROVED MICROCONTROLLER-BASED SENSORLESS BLDC MOTOR DRIVE FOR AUTOMOTIVE APPLICATIONS 1217
Fig. 2. Back-EMF detection during the PWM off-time moment.

Fig. 1. Direct back-EMF-sensing block diagram.
From phase A, if the forward voltage drop of the diode is
motor at 100% duty cycle to fully utilize the low bus voltage. ignored, we have
An improved direct back-EMF detection scheme that samples
di
the motor back EMF synchronously during either the PWM off νn = 0 − ri − L − ea . (1)
time or the PWM on time is proposed in the paper to overcome dt
this problem. From phase B, if the voltage drop on the switch is ignored,
In automobiles, windmilling effect can make fans rotate we have
without electric power. When the controller needs to control the
di
motor, if the motor is already spinning, the controller should be νn = ri + L − eb . (2)
able to determine if the motor is rotating and in what direction. dt
In this paper, a method for the microcontroller to detect the Adding (1) and (2), we get
motor rotation is presented. Also, a current-sensing method for
ea + eb
protection without a current-sensing resistor is proposed in this νn = − . (3)
paper as well. 2
Assuming a balanced three-phase system, if only the funda-
II. R EVIEW OF D IRECT B ACK -EMF S ENSING mental frequency is considered, we have
FOR BLDC D RIVES [6]
ea + eb + ec = 0. (4)
Generally, a BLDC motor is driven by a three-phase inverter
with what is called six-step commutation. In the reference From (3) and (4)
scheme [6], the PWM signal is applied to the high side switches ec
only. The back-EMF signal can be synchronously sampled on νn = . (5)
2
the unused phase during the high-side-switch PWM off time.
The back-EMF signals are directly fed into the microcontroller So, the terminal voltage νc
through resistors, as shown in Fig. 1. In this scheme, only three
3
resistors that limit the injected current are needed for back-EMF νc = ec + νn = ec . (6)
sensing. 2
Assuming at a particular step, phases A and B are conducting From the above equations, it can be seen that during the
current, and phase C is floating. The upper switch of phase A is PWM off time, which is the current freewheeling period,
pulsewidth modulated to regulate motor speed or current. The the terminal voltage of the floating phase is proportional to the
lower switch of phase B is on during the entire step, which back-EMF voltage without any superimposed switching noise.
is switched only at commutation. The terminal voltage νc is It is also very important that this terminal voltage is directly
sensed when the upper switch is off. When the upper switch referred to the ground instead of the neutral point. So, the
of phase A is turned on, the current is flowing through the neutral-point voltage information is not needed to detect the
switch to windings A and B. When the upper transistor of back-EMF zero crossing. Since the true back EMF is extracted
the half bridge is turned off, the current freewheels through the from the motor terminal voltage without any filtering, the zero
diode paralleled with the bottom switch of phase A, as shown crossing of the phase back EMF can be detected very precisely.
in Fig. 2. During this freewheeling period, the terminal voltage Synchronously sampling the back-EMF signal near the end of
νc is detected as phase C back EMF when there is no current in the PWM off time allows any switching noise to settle out
phase C. and allows sampling the signal without any filtering and the
From the circuit in Fig. 2, it is easy to see that νc = ec + νn , associated delay.
where νc is the terminal voltage of the floating phase C, ec is However, it requires a minimum PWM off time of a few
the phase back EMF, and νn is the neutral voltage of the motor. microseconds to detect the back EMF. This limits the maximum
Fig. 3. Winding terminal voltage during the PWM on time.
duty cycle to around 90% for 20-kHz switching frequency.

In some automotive applications, it is desired to be able to
run the motor at 100% duty cycle to fully utilize the low
battery voltage. Then, the voltage constant of the motor can be
Fig. 4. Hardware implementation for improved back-EMF detection.
increased by 10%. It will benefit the motor design and improve
the overall system efficiency. Therefore, during the high-side-switch PWM on time, the
If the back-EMF detection can be done during PWM on time, back-EMF zero-crossing information can be obtained by com-
then the limitation on the maximum duty cycle can be removed, paring the phase voltage with νdc /2. By sensing the back
and the motor can be driven with the full 100% duty cycle. EMF during high-side-switch PWM on time, it is possible to
An improved back-EMF detection is described in the following extend the duty cycle to 100%. In many cases, it will require
section. attenuation to bring the νdc /2 to be within the common mode
voltage range of the comparator. This should not be a problem
since the amplitude of the back-EMF signal is high during high-
III. I MPROVED D IRECT B ACK -EMF-S ENSING S CHEME :
speed operation. It is still preferred to use back-EMF detection
D ETECT THE B ACK EMF D URING THE PWM ON T IME
during PWM off time for startup because there is no signal
We can derive the floating-phase terminal winding voltage attenuation. Therefore, we can combine two sensing schemes
during the PWM on time. As shown in Fig. 3, it is assumed that together to optimize the system. That is, during startup and
phases A and B are conducting current; phase C is floating. low-speed (e.g., < 50% duty cycle) operation, the back EMF
From phase A, we can derive the value of νn can be detected during PWM off time, and then during high-
speed (e.g., > 50% duty cycle) operation, the back EMF can be
di
νn = νdc − ri − L − ea . (7) detected during PWM on time.
dt
From phase B, we can derive the value of νn IV. I MPLEMENTATION AND E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
di Fig. 4 shows the hardware implementation for this combined

νn = ri + L − eb . (8) direct back-EMF detection scheme.
dt
According to the commutation sequence, the controller se-
From (7) and (8), we derive lects which phase back EMF to sense via the multiplexer. The
multiplexer passes the selected phase back-EMF signal to the
νdc ea + eb
νn = − . (9) sense comparator. The selected phase voltage is compared to
2 2 a reference for determining back-EMF zero crossing and is
In a balanced three-phase system, if only the fundamental latched accordingly. This reference can be either internal or ex-
frequency is considered, we have ternal and is selectable according to which back-EMF-sensing
scheme is used. The comparator output can be latched during
ea + eb + ec = 0. (10) either PWM on time or off time again, which is selectable by
software. When the back-EMF zero crossing is detected during
Incorporating (10) into (9), we obtain the PWM off time, the internal fixed reference, which is close to
0 V, is selected. When the back-EMF zero crossing is detected
νdc ec
νn = + . (11) during the PWM on time, the external reference is selected. The
2 2 external reference voltage would be proportional to νdc /2. The
So, the terminal voltage νc can be expressed by software can make the transition smoothly by looking at duty
cycle.
3 νdc The improved direct back-EMF-sensing hardware integrated
νc = ec + νn = ec + . (12)
2 2 with a standard low-cost specific application microcontroller,
Fig. 5. Implementation of improved direct back-EMF-sensing scheme.
Fig. 6. Key waveforms for back-EMF sensing during PWM off time.
which is the ST7MC, is developed. Fig. 5 shows a system block
diagram of the microcontroller system that can do both back-
EMF detection schemes during the high-side-switch PWM on
or off time.
During startup and at low PWM duty cycles, the controller
is configured to detect back EMF during the PWM off time.
During PWM off time, the back-EMF zero-crossing event
voltage is at or near 0 V, so the reference voltage is set to the
fixed low internal voltage. With that, the input/output A (IOA),
input/output B (IOB), and input/output C (IOC pins are con-
figured as high-impedance inputs to prevent the attenuation
generated by the R1/R4, R2/R5, and R3/R6 resistor pairs.
This allows the controller to see the actual back-EMF voltage
without attenuation thus improving low-speed sensitivity and
startup performance.
At higher duty cycles, the controller is configured to de-
tect back EMF during the high-side-switch on time. Here,
attenuation is needed to bring the voltage within the common
Fig. 7. Key waveforms for back-EMF sensing during PWM on time.
mode range of the comparator as the back-EMF zero-crossing
event is centered on νdc /2. With that, the IOA, IOB, and during high-speed operation, the attenuation is not a problem.
IOC pins are reconfigured as outputs and set to logic low. All Please note the different back-EMF shape in Figs. 6 and 7.
back-EMF signals are then attenuated by the R1/R4, R2/R5, Fig. 8 demonstrates a running system at 100% duty cycle.
and R3/R6 resistor pairs. The microcontroller will select the The waveforms show the terminal voltage, current, and zero-
external reference, the attenuated dc bus voltage, for back-EMF crossing signal for same phase. From this waveform, it can be
zero-crossing detection. seen that the back-EMF zero crossing happens at half of the
Figs. 6 and 7 show waveforms for the improved detection dc-bus voltage.
scheme that the back EMF is sampled during PWM off time
and on time.
A. Startup
In Fig. 6, the back EMF is detected during PWM off time;
there is no attenuation of the signal, but the peak of the signal The sensorless schemes are not self-starting. In order to sense
is clamped at 5 and −0.7 V by the internal protection diodes. the back EMF, the motor must first be started and brought up to
Since only the back EMF of the floating winding is detected, a certain speed where the back-EMF voltage can be detected. In
the sensing pin of the microcontroller is tied to ground when practice, open-loop starting [10] is accomplished by providing a
the winding is conducting to reduce the noise. This is shown rotating stator field with a certain increasing frequency profile.
in Fig. 6; during the period that the winding is energized with After the speed reaches certain level, the back EMF can be
PWM, the sensing signal is low. For the zero-crossing signal, detected, providing the position information and the system
which is shown on the second trace, every toggling transition switches to synchronous commutation mode.
corresponds to one zero crossing detected. If there is no specific requirement for startup or light load,
In Fig. 7, the back EMF is detected during PWM on time, the like fan applications, this open-loop startup can be satisfactory.
signal is attenuated. Since the amplitude of the signal is high However, for some applications, e.g., automotive fuel pumps,
Fig. 9. Back-EMF signals when motor is rotating by windmilling effect.
Fig. 8. Running system at 100% duty cycle.
the startup has to be very fast to ensure that there is sufficient

fuel pressure within a very short time. It is very difficult to
tune the startup using the open-loop starting algorithm. In [7]
and [11], an optimized startup routine by manually tuning the
commutation time with the help of a tachometer is described.
According to the feedback of the tachometer, each commutation Fig. 10. Three resistors Rn are added in the winding terminals.
step time during startup is set such that the motor speed reaches
maximum value at the end of that step. This method is also
suitable for medium-to-heavy-load startup condition.
V. M OTOR -R OTATION D ETECTION AND

C URRENT S ENSING
A. Motor-Rotation Detection
Sometimes, the motor is rotating before the controller starts
the motor. For example, in an automotive engine cooling fan,
there can be a windmilling effect that could cause the rotor Fig. 11. Back-EMF signals after adding three terminal resistors.
to rotate without electrical power. A rotating rotor generates
detectable back EMF. Once back EMF is detected, rotation can is turning backward, the sequence will be A–C–B. Since the
be determined. If the rotor is rotating in the right direction, motor is turning in right direction, as shown in Fig. 11, at rising
there is no need to perform the startup. If the rotor is rotating edge of νa , νb is low and νc is high. If there is no signal at νa ,
in the wrong direction, then the microcontroller should be able νb , and νc , the motor is not running.
to sense this and make the proper corrections to start the motor If the micro detects that the motor is turning in right direc-
properly in the right direction. tion, zero crossing of the back EMFs is available for the rotor
If the system is configured, as shown in Fig. 1, the back-EMF position. Therefore, the controller can drive the motor directly
signals are shown in Fig. 9 when the motor is turning because in synchronous mode according to the zero-crossing informa-
of the windmilling effect. tion without regular startup routine. The controller can estimate
In an electrically undriven motor, where the rotor is rotating the motor speed and give PWM duty cycle accordingly. If
by some external means, the back-EMF signals are floating. the motor is turning in wrong direction, the controller has to
With no reference to the motor neutral point, the microcon- brake the motor by shorting three bottom MOSFET or injecting
troller is prevented from detecting the back-EMF zero crossing. dc braking current. After the motor stops, the controller can
To provide a reference point for the microcontroller, three other perform the regular startup routine.
resistors (Rn) are added, as shown in Fig. 10. As a result, the
back-EMF signals will change to those shown in Fig. 11.
B. Current Sensing
In Fig. 11, the zero crossings of the three-phase back-EMF
signals are clearly identifiable. At rising edge of νa , according To protect the circuit from overcurrent conditions or rotor
to the sign of νb and νc , the rotation direction can be deter- stall condition, some form of current sensing is required. The
mined. For example, if the motor is turning in right direction, most common solution is to place a low-ohm current-sensing
the sequence of three phases is A–B–C; otherwise, if the motor resistor in the current path at one of the power rails (ground
the system can switch to the alternative back-EMF-sensing

scheme introducing some attenuation to the back-EMF signal
and allowing for the high side switch to be full on.
With the combination of two detection schemes in one sys-
tem, the motor commutation detection can be optimized over
the entire speed range. The experimental results verify this
concept and show a good performance.
For automotive applications, the algorithm to detect motor
rotation caused by the windmilling effect is very useful. Also,
the method of measuring voltage drop on MOSFET can provide
over-current protection for the circuit but without current-
Fig. 12. Current-sensing circuit. sensing resistor.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author would like to thank T. Hopkins and D. Swanson
for their suggestions and efforts in editing this paper.
R EFERENCES
[1] K. Rajashekara, A. Kawamura, and K. Matsuse, Sensorless Control of AC
Motor Drives. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 1996.
[2] D. Erdman, “Control system, method of operating an electronically
commutated motor, and laundering apparatus,” U.S. Patent 4 654 566,
Mar. 31, 1987.
[3] K. Uzuka and H. Uzuhashi et al., “Microcomputer control for sensorless
brushless motor,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. IA-21, no. 4, pp. 595–601,
May/Jun. 1985.
[4] R. Becerra, T. Jahns, and M. Ehsani, “Four quadrant sensorless brushless
Fig. 13. Motor current and voltage signal from MOSFET.
ECM drive,” in Proc. IEEE Appl. Power Electron. Conf. and Expo., 1991,
pp. 202–209.
or supply) [7]. The current-sensing resistor not only causes [5] J. Moreira, “Indirect sensing for rotor flux position of permanent magnet
additional power losses, but also it brings some difficulty in AC motors operating in a wide speed range,” in Proc. IEEE Ind. Appl.
circuit layout and packaging. Soc. Annu. Meeting, 1994, pp. 401–407.
[6] J. Shao, D. Nolan, and T. Hopkins, “A novel direct back EMF detection
A solution can be realized by incorporating the properties of for sensorless brushless DC (BLDC) motor drives,” in Proc. IEEE APEC,
the MOSFET switches typically used in the inverter. MOSFETs 2002, pp. 33–38.
have a linear resistance characteristic when driven fully on. It is [7] J. Shao, D. Nolan, M. Tessier, and D. Swanson, “A novel microcontroller-
based sensorless brushless (BLDC) motor drive for automotive fuel
possible to get the current information from the voltage drop pumps,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 39, no. 6, pp. 1734–1740,
seen across a fully enhanced MOSFET switch. This current Nov./Dec. 2003.
information is only used for current-protection purposes, there- [8] J. Shao, D. Nolan, and T. Hopins, “Improved direct back EMF detection
for sensorless brushless DC (BLDC) motor drives,” in Proc. IEEE APEC,
fore, the variation of Rdson is acceptable and in some ways 2003, pp. 300–305.
beneficial. [9] J. Shao and T. Hopkins, “Determining rotation of a freewheeling motor,”
A simple circuit is proposed to perform the current detection U.S. Patent Application 20 050 030 002, 2003.
[10] R. Krishnan and R. Ghosh, “Starting algorithm and performance of a PM
by measuring the low side MOSFET voltage drop. Fig. 12 DC brushless motor drive system with no position sensor,” in Proc. IEEE
shows circuit for only one phase. The other two phases are PESC, 1989, pp. 815–821.
exactly the same. When the MOSFET T4 is turned on, Q1 is [11] J. Shao, D. Nolan, and T. Hopins, “A direct back EMF detection for
sensorless brushless DC (BLDC) motor drives and the start-up tuning,”
turned on. The voltage of point Iv is the voltage drop across the in Proc. Power Electron. Technol., 2002, pp. 180–190.
MOSFET T4. When T4 is turned off, Q1 is turned off, too. The
voltage of point Iv will be zero. Fig. 13 shows the waveforms.
VI. C ONCLUSION Jianwen Shao (S’98–A’00–M’06) received the B.E.

and M.E. degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing,
The original direct back-EMF-sensing scheme has a max- China, in 1992 and 1995, and the M.S. degree from
imum duty-cycle limitation, since there is a required high- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,
Blacksburg, in 2000, all in electrical engineering.
side-switch minimum PWM off time to do the detection. From 1995 to 1998, he participated in designing
The improved direct back-EMF-sensing scheme eliminates this low-harmonic high-power multilevel inverters for
duty-cycle limitation by adding the option of sensing the back induction motors in China, as the Lead Design En-
gineer with Beijing CATCH Technology Company.
EMF during the high-side-switch PWM on time. An optimized Since 2000, he has been with the STMicroelectron-
system uses both sensing schemes where during motor startup ics Power System Applications Laboratory, Schaum-
and low speed, when back EMF is low, it is preferred to use the burg, IL, as an Applications Engineer for motor control and lighting systems.
He is the holder of two patents in the power electronics area, with more pending.
original scheme, since there is no signal attenuation. Then, at Mr. Shao is a member of the IEEE Industry Applications, IEEE Power
higher speeds, where the back EMF is much easier to detect, Electronics, and IEEE Industrial Electronics Societies.
Efficiency and Power Losses in PM BLDC Motor
with Variable Bridge/half-bridge Structure
Electronic Commutator
K. Krykowski *, A. Bodora †
Silesian University of Technology/Department of Power Electronics, Electrical Drives and Robotics,
Gliwice, Poland
* e-mail: [email protected]
†
e-mail: [email protected]
DH
Abstract— In practice we often meet with electrical drives,
where it is necessary to operate with higher speed, while
TH
load torque is less than rated torque. This type of operation
is called “constant power operation” and may be defined as
second range of natural motor torque-speed characteristic. D T1 T3 T5
D5
D1 D3
In case of motors excited with permanent magnets magnetic La ea
flux is constant, and while supply voltage remains constant, UDC Lb eb
C
motor speed is also (approximately) kept constant. Lc ec
In practice, different solutions are attempted in order to
T4 T6 T2 D0
achieve increased rotating speed of brushless motors at D4 D6 D2
decreased torque. One of the methods, which make possible
PM BLDC motor operation at increased speed and
decreased torque, is use of electronic commutator with Fig.1. Diagram of variable structure electronic commutator
switchable bridge-half-bridge structure. The investigation
presented in the paper has been aimed at estimation of In practice, different solutions are attempted in order to
losses and efficiency in the drive consisting of brushless achieve increased rotating speed of brushless motors at
motor operating with variable structure commutator. decreased torque [1],[2],[3],[4],[5],[6].
Results of theoretical analysis, computer simulations and One of the methods which make possible PM BLDC
laboratory tests have shown that application of electronic
motor operation at increased speed and decreased torque
variable structure commutator, which makes possible
operation in the second speed range without increasing
is use of electronic commutator with switchable bridge-
motor power and supply source power, causes an half-bridge structure [7],[8].
insignificant decrease in overall drive efficiency. The circuit is shown in Fig.1, and analytically determined
torque-speed curves of bridge and half-bridge
commutator are shown in Fig.2.
Keywords— brushless dc motor, electronic commutator, If we look at Fig.1, then apart from transistor bridge (T1-
drive system, efficiency. T6) we may also observe a fully-controlled valve TH,
which connects motor’s neutral point with positive
I. INTRODUCTION terminal of supply source, D01 diode, which connects
negative terminal of supply source to motor’s neutral
In practice we often meet with electrical drives, where point and link (buffer) circuit consisting of diode (D) and
it is necessary to operate with higher speed, while load capacitor (C).
torque is less than rated torque. This type of operation is
called “constant power operation” and may be defined as
second range of natural motor torque-speed characteristic.
Change of speed range in electric motor is related to
change of idle run speed. In the second operation range,
as idle run speed increases, electromagnetic torque
decreases. This is usually achieved by decreasing
excitation flux. In case of motors excited with permanent
magnets magnetic flux is constant, so there is no simple
way of decreasing flux in the air gap.
Fig.2. Torque-speed curves for PMBLDC motor drive with variable

structure commutator
326
978-1-4244-1742-1/08/$25.00
c 2008 IEEE
The properties of PM BLDC motor with electronic
commutator and torque-speed curves have been discussed t s +T
3
in [7], [8]. 3
The acting principle and torque-speed characteristics of ITRMS = ³ iT2 dt (7)
T
PM BLDC motor with variable structure commutator ts
have been presented in papers [7], [8]. A significant Mixing formulas (6) and (7) together we arrive at current
factor determining suitability of using this type of form factor defined for valve conducting period as:
electronic commutator is its efficiency. Since available I
references do not provide any information on this point, kiT = TRMS (8)
IT ( AV )
we have tried ourselves to determine power losses and
efficiency of PM BLDC motor with switchable structure Introducing this factor and taking formula (5) into
commutator. Computer simulations and lab tests with a 1 account, variable losses may be determined as:
kW motor have supplemented analytical investigation. 3
PlosB var = ¦ 2( R on + Rs )k iT2 I d2 (9)
II. DRIVE LOSSES k =1
Efficiency of the converter-motor assembly is mostly for commutator operating in bridge structure supplied
influenced by motor and converter losses and it may be directly from the source or
formulated as: 3
η ECM = η ECη M (1) PlosBv var = ¦ 2( R on + Rs )kiT2 I d2 + U DF I DC (10)

k =1
Since PM BLDC motor cannot operate without
for variable structure commutator connected into bridge
commutator present, the losses for converter and motor
structure. Relation for losses in both these configurations
have not been treated separately. Converter losses are
may be given as:
mostly due to voltage drop across power electronics
valves. In case of PM BLDC motor the most significant PlosBv var = PlosB var + U DF I DC (11)
losses are copper losses ( PlosCu ) and iron losses ( PlosFe ). Constant losses may be determined if frequency-
dependent losses (iron losses) and speed-dependent
Other losses such as e.g. mechanical losses are also
losses are known. In case of typical PM BLDC motors
present. we may assume with satisfactory accuracy that these
Another approach is to classify losses into constant losses are proportional to speed. Then, in case of bridge:
losses (speed and frequency dependent) and variable
losses (load-dependent). Variable losses cover copper
ω
Ploscon = Ploscon (12)
losses, valve losses, wiring losses and losses in diode D ωn
of buffer capacitor circuit. In case of commutator with Torque corresponding to these losses (loss torque) may
bridge structure these losses may be expressed as: be defined as:
3 P
2 Tlos = loscon Ploscon (13)
PlosB var = ¦ 2(R
k =1
on + Rs ) I skRMS (2) ωn
Total electromagnetic torque is the sum of load torque
and for electronic commutator connected directly to the
and loss torque in accordance with formula:
source or
3
Te = Tm + Tlos (14)
PlosBv var = ¦ 2( R on
2
+ Rs ) I skRMS + U DF I DC (3) and is related to motor’s average current in the following
k =1 way:
for variable structure commutator connected into bridge. Te = 2k f I d (15)
Often it is more convenient to introduce average while average current is related in turn to source current
converter output current. This current is related to the by approximate formula (4).
source current by approximate formula: Total losses are equal to sum of constant and variable
I losses and are expressed as:
I d ≈ DC (4)
D PlosB = PlosB var + PlosBcon (16)
and is equal to the average valve current for valve In case of half-bridge commutator variable losses may be
conducting time. expressed as:
Therefore: 3
IT ( AV ) = I d 2
(5) PlosHB var = ¦ (R
k =1
on + Rs ) I skRMS (17)
and valve average current is defined as:
t s +T commutator operating in bridge structure supplied
3
3 directly from the source or
IT ( AV ) = ³i T dt (6) 3
T 2
ts PlosHBv var = ¦ (2 R on + Rs ) I skRMS (18)
where ts is valve’s switch-on time instant. k =1
The RMS valve current value for valve conducting time for variable structure commutator connected into bridge
may be defined as: structure.
2008 13th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (EPE-PEMC 2008) 327
Introducing switch current form factor for conducting bridge structure. If we compare equations (27) and (28)
period the following formula is obtained: and transform them a little, the following formula is
3 obtained:
PlosHB var = ¦ (R on + Rs )kiT2 I d2 (19) η ECMBv R k2 I
k =1 = 1 − on iT DC (29)
η ECMB D U DC
and
3 and it makes possible estimation of variable structure
PlosHBv var = ¦ (2R
k =1
on + Rs )kiT2 I d2 (20) impact of drive efficiency, if commutator is connected
into half-bridge.
While discussing (9), (10), (19) and (20) it must be noted Basing on these relationships, efficiency characteristics of
that distortion coefficient for valve current depends on PM BLDC motor rated at 1 kW and supplied from 24 V
motor operational conditions and may be expressed dc source have been calculated. These characteristics are
roughly as: shown in Fig.3.
kiTB = 1÷ 1.05 (21) 0,9
for converter connected into bridge structure and
0,85 1
kiTHB = 1÷ 1.35 (22)
2
for converter connected into half-bridge structure. 0,8
4
0,75
III. IMPACT OF VARIABLE STRUCTURE ELECTRONIC 5 3
efficiency
COMMUTATOR ON DRIVE LOSSES AND EFFICIENCY
0,7
Drive user is always interested in getting the answer
to the question, how choice of structure influences 0,65
efficiency of electronic commutator-motor assembly. If
different losses are known, overall efficiency may be 0,6
defined as:
0,55
PMout
η ECMB = (23)
PMout + Plos 0,5
Mixing formulas (11), (16) and (23) together the 0 1 2 3 4 5
Torque (Nm)
following formulas are obtained:
PMout Fig. 3. Efficiency of tested PM BLDC motor with variable structure
η ECMB = (24) commutator vs. load torque for bridge structure (n = 1000 rpm (1), n =
PMout + PlosB 2000 rpm (2), n = 2600 rpm (3)) and for half-bridge structure (n = 3500
and rpm (4), n = 4500 rpm (5))
PMout
η ECMBv = (25)
PMout + PlosB + U DF I IV. LABORATORY TEST STAND
They apply to electronic commutator-PM BLDC motor In order to verify the theoretical investigation, lab
assembly efficiency in case of electronic commutator and simulation tests have been run. In lab tests, prototype
connected directly to the dc voltage supply and variable PM BLDC motor has been used, rated at UDC = 24V, nn
structure electronic commutator connected into bridge = 2600 rpm, Mn = 3.7 Nm, Pn = 1 kW, fn = 130Hz.
structure. If we compare equations (24) and (25) and Motor construction allows for second range operation
transform them a little, the following formula is obtained: (half-bridge) at the maximum (limit) parameters: nn2 =
η ECMBv U 4500 rpm, Mn2 = 2 Nm, Pn2 = 950 W, . Phase
= 1 − DF (26) resistance and inductance are equal to and,
η ECMB U DCF
respectively. Motor has been supplied from battery with
and it makes possible estimation of variable structure
120 Ah capacitance and 24 V voltage and loaded with dc
impact of drive efficiency, if commutator is connected
generator. No-load losses have been determined from the
into bridge. Mixing formulas (16), (19), (20) and (23)
measurements. These losses change proportionately to
together the following formulas are obtained:
speed and they are equal to Pbj = 102W at n = 3000rpm.
PMout
η ECMHB = (27)
PMout + PlosB
and
PMout
η ECMHBr = (28)
PMout + PlosB + Ron kiT2 I d2
They apply to electronic commutator-PM BLDC motor
assembly efficiency in case of electronic commutator
connected directly to the dc voltage supply and variable
structure electronic commutator connected into half-
328 2008 13th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (EPE-PEMC 2008)
a) “RLE” block contains motor’s main circuits, “El-Mech”
IG block contains relationships describing drive’s
IDC BLDC - Motor coefficients linking mechanical and electrical properties
as well as mechanical characteristics, “Set” block is used
UG
UDC EC G R to set angular speed ω, “EC” block contains variable
structure commutator, “B-HB” block sets commutator
structure, “Modulator” block contains PWM modulator
and speed controller, “eta” is efficiency block and “VDC”
b)
block is used to set supply voltage.
Output terminals of “Modulator” block are used to
control appropriate transistors of electronic commutator,
“Bridge” output is responsible for bridge transistors and
“MOS” output controls TH transistor responsible for
changing commutator structure.
VI. SIMULATION AND LABORATORY VERIFICATION
To verify efficiency analysis series of simulations and lab
tests have been run. Difference between simulation
results and theoretical results shown in Fig.6 has
practically amounted to nil.
Fig.4. Laboratory test stand with PM BLDC motor operating in two a) 0,9
speed ranges and loaded with dc generator
a) schema of laboratory stand 0,85
b) view of laboratory stand
0,8
During lab tests PM BLDC motor has been loaded with
dc machine operating as generator and rated at 1.2 kW. efficiency
0,75
Circuit diagram is shown in Fig.4. 0,7
Shaft power has been determined as sum of generator
output power and generator losses, in accordance with 0,65
PMout = U G I G + PGlos (30) 0,6
and generator losses have been determined basing on the 0,55
manufacturer’s data.
Three SUP/SUB75N08-09L transistors connected in 0,5
parallel have constituted one branch of the analysed 0 1 2 3 4
converter. Valve conducting resistance for one branch has Torque (Nm)
been equal to Ron = 2,9 − 5,8mΩ , while voltage drop

across diode has been equal to U DF = 0, 2 − 0,4V . b) 0,9
V. COMPUTER MODEL 0,85
The electrical circuit shown in Fig.1 has been 0,8

transformed into a three-phase computer circuital model
of PM BLDC motor with variable structure commutator 0,75
efficiency
(Fig.5). 0,7
MOS-pulse i1,2,3 BEMF1
MOS-m P1M
BEMF1
0,65
Bridge-pulse BEMF2
V0
BEMF2 i1,2,3
V1 BEMF3
DC-set
PDC
V2
BEMF3 pulse
0,6
V1 V3
RLE dw/dt
V0
V2 PDC
P1M omega
TL 0,55
V3 TL 3.7
Pout teta
EC
VDC
eta
Pout 0,5
El-Mech
24
pulse B-HB
0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5
Bridge
struct 1 Scope1 Torque (Nm)
omega-m set
MOS
omega-set 209.44
Modulator
Fig. 5. The 3-phase circuital model of PM BLDC motor in basic version Fig. 6. PM BLDC motor efficiency vs. load torque:
- block diagram a) for variable structure electronic commutator operating in bridge
This model is based on circuital model presented in [9 ] structure and at speed equal to rated speed n = nn = 2600 rpm
b) for variable structure electronic commutator operating in half-bridge
and contains several blocks. structure and at speed equal to n = 1,73 nn = 4500 rpm
2008 13th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (EPE-PEMC 2008) 329
In case of lab tests difference in results has been greater,
attaining several per cent or sometimes more. Some of
measurement results of efficiency vs. load torque for
typical operational conditions, i.e. for bridge structure
and at rated speed nn = 2600 rpm, load changing from 10
to 110 per cent of the rated load, and for half-bridge
structure and at speed n = 4500 rpm, load changing from
10 to 60 per cent of the rated load have been shown in
Fig.6.
VII. FINAL CONCLUSIONS AND REMARKS
Simulations and lab tests have shown that benefits arising
from application of electronic variable structure
commutator, which makes possible operation in the
second speed range are attained at the insignificant cost
of overall drive efficiency decrease of the order of c. 1
per cent.
The investigation has shown that if source power is
limited and it is necessary to enlarge drive speed range,
drive system consisting of PM BLDC motor and
electronic commutator is an attractive and valuable
design alternative.
REFERENCES
[1] Cros J., Paynot C., Figueroa J., Viarouge P., Multi-Star PM
brushless DC motor for traction applications 10th European
Conference on Power Electronics and Applications, 2-4
September 2003,
[2] Krishnan R., Electric Motor Drives, Modeling, Analysis and
Control, Prentice Hall, New Jersey 2001.
[3] Nipp, E.; Alternative to field-weakening of surface-mounted
permanent-magnet motors for variable-speeddrives, Industry
Applications Conference, 1995. Thirtieth IAS Annual Meeting,
IAS '95. Conference Record of the 1995 IEEE , Volume: 1 , 8-12
Oct 1995.
[4] Sakurai T, Sakurai M, Arimo M., Driving Method for Delta-
Connected Brushless- Sensorless Motor - Power Conversion
Conference - Nagaoka 1997.
[5] J. S. Lawler, J. M. Bailey, J. W. McKeever, and J. Pinto,
“Limitations of the Conventional Phase Advance Method for
Constant Power Operation of the Brushless DC Motor,” submitted
to IEEE Journal of Industry Applications, 2001.
[6] J. S. Lawler, J. M. Bailey, J. W. McKeever, and J. Pinto,
“Extending the Constant Power Speed Range of the Brushless DC
Motor Through Dual Mode Inverter Control – Part II: Laboratory
Proofof- Principle,” submitted to the IEEE Journal of Industry
Applications, 2001.
[7] Krykowski K., Bodora A.: Variable structure bridge/half-bridge
electronic commutator for PM BLDC Motor supply. ISIE2005.
Dubrovnik
[8] Krykowski K., Bodora A.: Properties of the electronic commutator
designed for two zone operation of PM BLDC motor drive.
ISIE2005. Dubrovnik
[9] Krykowski K., HetmaĔczyk J.: The circuital model of PM BLDC.
Prace Naukowe Politechniki ĝląskiej. Elektryka 2007/4 (204),
Gliwice 2007.
330 2008 13th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (EPE-PEMC 2008)
2010 Second International Conference on Communication Software and Networks
Modeling and Simulation of BLDC Motor

Using Soft Computing Techniques
Rakesh Saxena1 Yogesh Pahariya2 Aditya Tiwary3
1
Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, SGSITS, Indore, 2 Professor, Electrical & Electronics Engineering Department, IES,IPS
Academy, Indore, 3Lecturer, Electrical Engineering Department, SGSITS, Indore,
Abstract— In this paper a soft computing technique PSIM is used controlled and requires rotor position information for
for the performance simulation of the BLDC motor. With the help
proper commutations of current. The brushless DC
of its user friendly approach and some basic theories, the
corresponding PSIM models for the BLDC can easily be (BLDC) motor has been used in many applications such
constructed. The simulation results of BLDC motor performance as computer, automatic office machine, robots for
can critically evaluate under various input parameters in the PSIM automation [1], drives of many electronics and miniature
environment. The accuracy of this approach can also be verified by machine [2]. The BLDC motor has advantages of the DC
comparing the simulation results in PSIM with the response
obtained from the BLDC motor established results. motor such as simple control, high torque, high efficiency
and compactness. Also, brush maintenance is no longer
Index Terms— PMBLDC, PSIM, Simulation, Soft computing, required, and many problems resulting from mechanical
Modeling. wear of brushes and commutators are improved by
changing the position of rotor and stator in DC motor. To
I. INTRODUCTION alternate the function of brushes and commutator, the
The permanent magnet brushless dc (BLDC) motor is BLDC motor requires an inverter and a position sensor
gaining popularity being used in computer, aerospace, that detects rotor position for proper commutation of
military, automotive, industrial and household products current. The typical circuit diagram of BLDC motor with
because of its high torque, compactness, and high converter is shown in figure 1.
efficiency. The BLDC motor is inherently electronically
Figure – 1 BLDC motor with Converter circuit
PSIM is a simulation package specifically designed for

power electronics and motor controls with fast simulation II. PRINCIPLE AND CONSTRUCTION
and user friendly interface. It provides a powerful BLDC motors are a type of synchronous motor. This
simulation environment for power electronics, analog and means the magnetic field generated by the stator and the
digital control, magnetic, and motor drive system studies. magnetic field generated by the rotor rotates at the same
In addition, PSIM supports links to third-party software frequency. BLDC motors do not experience the “slip” that
like MATLAB through custom DLL blocks. is normally seen in induction motors. BLDC motors come
The PSIM simulation package consists of the circuit in single-phase, 2-phase and 3-phase configurations.
schematic program PSIM, the simulator engine, and the Corresponding to its type, the stator has the same number
waveform processing program SIMVIEW. The simulation of windings. The 3-phase motors are the most popular and
process is shown in figure -2. widely used [9].
978-0-7695-3961-4/10 $26.00 © 2010 IEEE 583

DOI 10.1109/ICCSN.2010.121
Fig. 2. PSIM Simulation process
used to make permanent magnets. As the technology

A. Stator advances, rare earth alloy magnets are gaining popularity.
The stator of a BLDC motor consists of stacked steel The ferrite magnets are less expensive but they have the
laminations with windings placed in the slots that are disadvantage of low flux density for a given volume. In
axially cut along the inner periphery traditionally, the contrast, the alloy material has high magnetic density per
stator resembles that of an induction motor; however, the volume and enables the rotor to compress further for the
windings are distributed in a different manner as shown in same torque. Also, these alloy magnets improve the size-
figure 3. Most BLDC motors have three stator windings to-weight ratio and give higher torque for the same size
connected in star fashion. One or more coils are placed in motor using ferrite magnets. Some rotor constructions are
the slots and they are interconnected to make a winding. shown in figure 4.
Each of these windings is distributed over the stator
periphery to form an even numbers of poles. There are
two types of stator windings variants: trapezoidal and
sinusoidal motors. This differentiation is made on the
basis of the interconnection of coils in the stator windings
to give the different types of back Electromotive Force
(EMF).
B. Rotor
Figure 4 - Rotor constructions
C. Rotor Position Sensing

Unlike a brushed DC motor, the commutation
of a BLDC motor is controlled electronically. To rotate
the BLDC motor, the stator windings should be energized
in a sequence. Rotor position is sensed by Hall Effect
sensors embedded into the stator which gives the
sequence of phase energisation [3]. Most of BLDC
motors have three Hall sensors embedded into the stator
on the non-driving end of the motor. Whenever the rotor
Fig. 3 - BLDC Motor Stator magnetic poles pass near the Hall sensors, they give a
high or low signal, indicating the N or S pole is passing
The rotor is made of permanent magnet and can vary near the sensors. Based on the Combination of these three
from two to eight pole pairs with alternate North (N) and Hall sensor signals, the exact sequence of commutation
South (S) poles. Based on the required magnetic field can be determined [4, 5].
density in the rotor, the proper magnetic material is
chosen to make the rotor. Ferrite magnets are traditionally
584
III. MATHEMATICAL MODELING E b = k e _ b .ω m
Each active phase in ac motor is describe by a first
order differential equation. The general voltage equation E c = k e _ c .ω m
of one of active phases is given by, The coefficients ke_a, ke_b, and ke_c are dependent
n
dψ kx (θ , i x ) on the rotor angle θr. In this model, an ideal trapezoidal
v x = Ri x + ∑
k =1 dt waveform profile is assumed.
The mechanical equations are:
Where vx is the active phase voltage, R is the
phase resistance, ix is the phase current, θ is the rotor
position, ψ kx (θ , ix ) is the total flux linkage of the active
phase and n is the number of phases. [6,7]. The electrical
equivalent circuit of BLDC motor is shown in figure 5.
The equations of the 3-phase brushless dc where B is a coefficient, Tload is the load torque,
machine are: and P is the no. of poles. The coefficient B is calculated
from the moment of inertia J and the mechanical time
constant τmech as below:
IV. SIMULATION OF BLDC IN PSIM

A 3-phase brushless dc motor is taken in PSim for
simulation purpose with trapezoidal waveform back emf.
In figure 5, nodes a, b, and c are the stator winding
where va, vb, and vc are the phase voltages, ia, ib, terminals for Phase A, B, and C, respectively. The stator
and ic are the phase currents, R, L, and M are the stator windings are Y connected, and Node n is the neutral
phase resistance, self inductance, and mutual inductance, point. The shaft node is the connecting terminal for the
and Ea, Eb and Ec are the back emf of Phase A, B, and C, mechanical shaft. They are all power nodes and should be
respectively. The back emf voltages are a function of the connected to the power circuit. Node sa, sb, and sc are the
rotor mechanical speed ωm and the rotor electrical angle outputs of the built-in 6-pulse hall effect position sensors
θr, that is: for Phase A, B, and C, respectively. The sensor output is a
Ea = ke _ a .ω m bipolar commutation pulse (1, 0,and -1). The sensor
Fig. 5 - Simulation model of BLDC
585
output nodes are all control nodes and should be Theta_0(deg.) 0
connected to the control circuit [8].
Theta_advance(deg.) 0
A hall effect position sensor consists of a set of hall
switches and a set of trigger magnets. The hall switch is a Conduction Pulse Width in degree 120
semiconductor switch (e.g. MOSFET or BJT) that opens Voltage rating in volts 300
or closes when the magnetic field is higher or lower than Current rating in A 10
a certain threshold value. It is based on the hall effect, Power rating in watts 3000
which generates an emf proportional to the flux-density Speed rating in rpm 10000
when the switch is carrying a current supplied by an
external source. It is common to detect the emf using a
signal conditioning circuit integrated with the hall switch The simulation process have three steps as shown in
or mounted very closely to it. This provides a TTL- figure 2. Complete simulation model of BLDC Motor
compatible pulse with sharp edges and high noise with converter and control circuit is shown in figure 5.
immunity for connection to the controller via a screened Simulation Model is consists of BLDC motor, six
cable. For a three-phase brushless dc motor, three hall IGBT’s, current probes, speed sensor, AND gates,
switches are spaced 120 electrical deg. apart and are Proportional Blocks, voltage probes (node to ground),
mounted on the stator frame. The set of trigger magnets comparator, Proportional-Integral Controller, 2nd order
can be a separate set of magnets, or it can use the rotor low pass filter etc.
magnets of the brushless motor. If the trigger magnets are
separate, they should have the matched pole spacing (with V. RESULTS
respect to the rotor magnets), and should be mounted on These results were obtain by running the SIMVIEW.
the shaft in close proximity to the hall switches. If the The results of other parameters like gate pulse, Hall Effect
trigger magnets use the rotor magnets of the machine, the sensor pulses also can be obtained by adding these
hall switches must be mounted close enough to the rotor parameters in SIMVIEW. The simulation waveforms
magnets, where they can be energized by the leakage flux show the start-up transient of the mechanical speed (in
at the appropriate rotor positions. rpm), developed torque Tem, and 3-phase input currents.
The figure 4 shows a brushless dc motor drive system The simulation is take place at reference speed of 7000
with speed feedback. The motor is fed by a 3-phase rpm and 0.25 Nm load torque and a DC voltage of 300V.
voltage source inverter. The outputs of the motor hall The result is shown in the figure 6, the speed starts from
effect position sensors are used as the gatings signals for 0rpm, it decreases upto t=2ms and starts increasing
the inverter, resulting a 6-pulse operation. The speed slowly. It increases upto 6500rpm at time t=8ms and then
control is achieved by modulating sensor commutation it becomes constant at 6500rpm at t=8ms. The speed
pulses (Vgs for Phase A in this case) with another high- always remains less than the reference speed of 7000rpm.
frequency pulses (Vgfb for Phase A). The high-frequency Therefore there is a error in speed of 500rpm with respect
pulse is generated from a dc current feedback loop. The to reference speed. Starting torque is almost 2.75 Nm.
DC voltage is applied to the BLDC motor which is Motor attains a constant torque of 1Nm at 5 ms.
converted into three phase AC by use of inverter. The The simulation is take place at reference speed of 7000
three phase inverter circuit consists of six IGBT’s which rpm and 0.01 Nm load torque and a DC voltage of 300V.
converts DC to AC .Three current probes are connected As shown in the figure 7, the speed starts from 0 rpm ,it
through each phase to obtain the wave form of the current decreases upto t=2ms and starts increasing slowly. It
in each phase. The outputs of the motor Hall Effect increases upto 7000 rpm at time t=8ms and then it
position sensors are used as the gatings signals for the becomes constant at 7000 rpm at t=8ms.The speed
inverter’s IGBT’s. remains the same as than of the reference speed of 7000
The table – 1 mentioned parameter of the BLDC rpm. Therefore there is no error in speed with respect to
motor [8]. reference speed.Starting torque is almost 2.65 Nm. Motor
Table - 1: BLDC MOTOR PARAMETER attains a constant torque of 0.75 Nm at 5 ms.
R(stator resistance) in ohms 11.9 The simulation is take place at reference speed of 400 rpm
L(stator self inductance) in H 0.00207 and 0.25 Nm load torque and a DC voltage of 300V. As
M(stator mutual inductance) in H 0.00069 shown in the figure 8, the speed starts from 0 rpm, it
decreases upto t=20ms and there after becomes nearly
Vpk/Krpm 32.3
constant -2000 rpm in simulation result. Switching torque
Vrpm/Krpm 22.9 is almost 0.89 Nm. At t=5ms the torque becomes 0.As the
No. of poles P 4 speed is negative and the torque is becoming zero so the
Moment of Inertia in Kg m2 7E-006 motor do not start.
Mech. Time constant in sec. 0.006
586
VI. CONCLUSION
PSim software is designed to provide a debugging,
diagnostic and demonstration tool for the development of
algorithms and applications in electric drives. The
modeling and analysis of BLDC is done for Psim The
simulation results of this paper has proposed the use of a
commercially available software package to study the
performance of BLDC motor. The PSIM simulation
provides good soft computing technique. The results of
simulation model gives help in building hardware with
expected results. The simulation saves time and
manpower in making hardware models at initial stages
and reduces the costing of the research work.
Figure 6 - speed 7000 rpm & load torque 0.25 Nm REFERENCES

[1] Ki-Hong Park, Tae-Sung Kim, Sung- Chan Ahn, Dong-Seok
Hyun. “Speed Control Of High- Performance Brushless DC Motor
Drives by Load Torque Estimation.” 0-7803-7754-0/03 2003 IEEE
Conf., Pp 1677-1681.
[2] Joo Han Kim, In Soung Jung & Ha Gyeong Sung, “Design and
Manufacturing of ultra small actuator” IEEE 3rd International
Conference on Mechatronics 2006, PP 23-26
[3] Quan Jiang, Chao Bi, Abdullah Al Mamum. “An Effective
Approach to Predict Performances of High Speed BLDC Motors in
Hard DiskDrives.” 0-7803-7906-3/03 2003. IEEE Conf. Pp.2120-
2125.
[4] C.Bi, Z.J. Liu and S.X. Chen “Estimation of Back-Emf of PM
BLDC motors using derivative of FE solutions” IEEE transaction
on magnetics vol 36, No 4, july2000 Pp 697-700.
[5] Byoung-Heekang, Choel-ju Kim, Hyung-su Mok, Gyu-Hachoe
“Analysis of torque ripple in BLDC motor with commutation
time” ISIE conf. 2001 Pusan, Korea.Pp 1044-1048.
[6] S.M. Madani Lei Hao Hamid A.Toliyat. “A Low Cost Four-
Figure7 - Results at 7000 rpm & 0.01 Nm Switch BLDC Motor Drive with Active Power Factor Correction.”
07803-7474-6/02 2002 IEEE Conf. Pp 579-584.
[7] Tae-Hyung Kim, and Mehrdad Ehsani. “An Error Analysis of the
Sensorless Position Estimation for BLDC Motors”. 2003 IEEE
Conf. Pp 611-617 .
[8] PSIM User’s Guide Version 6.1 Release 3 February 2005
[9] Brushless DC (BLDC) Motor Fundamentals Author: Padmaraja
Yedamale 2003 Microchip Technology Inc. Application note
[10] Wonbok Hong,Wootaik Lee,Byoung-Kuk Lee,”Dynamic
Simulation of Brushless DC Motor Drives Considering Phase
Commutation for Automotive Applications”, IEEE Conference
2007. Pp 1377-1383.
Figure 8 - Results at 400 rpm & 0.25 Nm
587

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What is the paper describing?

What is the paper describing?

What are the main components of a motor control system?

What are the main components of a motor control system?

BLDC Motor Control Algorithm for Low-Cost

1-4244-0714-1/07/$20.00 C 2007 IEEE. 1400

sensor-based systems. Therefore, sensorless techniques co

III. PROPOSED ALGORITHM

IV. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION

Fig. 6 The schematic of the BLDC motor drive system.

Fig. 5 Software flowchart.

To generate constant PWM signal, P3.0-P3.5 port

56F8013 Motorola 3.15 On-chip ADC 384-1.5kRAM On-chip PWM

Table 1 shows different micro-controllers that are l_-

ESTIMATION OF SPEED AND ROTOR POSITION OF BLDC

2 Modeling of Brushless DC Motor

dωm (15) B. Brushless motor drive system

The combining all the relevant equations, the system in the

X = [ias ibs icsωmθ ] (18)

The state space representation of the system is as follows.

Figure 2: System configuration

The Extended Kalman Filter is necessary to estimate rotor

Figure 4: Block diagram of the time-discrete state-space

E. Determination of the noise and state covariance

Prediction of the state vector at sampling time (k+1) from the

Step 4: Kalman filter gain computation. The Kalman filter

For simplicity of notation P (k+1/k) has been replaced by

Step 5: State vector estimation. The state vector estimation

Where for simplicity of notation, Xˆ = ( k + 1 / k + 1) has been

Where for simplicity of notation Pˆ = ( k + 1 / k + 1) has been

Figure 4.1 represents speed response under no load and rated

Figure 4.10: Torque responses under step change at 0.2 sec.

Figure 4.5: Actual and Estimated speed (EKF) responses

Figure 4.11: Actual rotor position

Figure 4.6: Reference and Actual speed

Figure 4.12: Estimated rotor position (EKF)

Figure 4.7: Estimated speed

Figure 4.13: Actual phase current

Figure 4.8: Measured speed error

side can be determined indirectly from the estimated rotor

Figure 4.14: Estimated phase current (EKF) References

An FPGA-Based Novel Digital PWM Control

A N ELECTRIC motor is defined as a transducer that con-

0278-0046/$26.00 © 2009 IEEE

Fig. 1. Typical inverter drive system for a BLDC motor.

Fig. 3. Sensor versus drive timing.

Fig. 4. BLDC motor showing the commutation sequence.

III. D IGITAL PWM C ONTROL OF BLDC D RIVES

Fig. 7. Proposed digital control.

Fig. 10. Steady-state speed response.

rotor moment of inertia, and load torque, respectively ΔωH = + ω∗ − e− J t − ω ∗ . (13)

Fig. 12. Final experimental setup.

The overall block diagram with the closed-loop control using

Fig. 13. Block diagram showing operations and functions implemented in

motors affordable for manufacturers to use in their products.

VI. S IMULATION R ESULTS AND

value of the maximum speed ripple stays well within 30 r/min,

Ali Emadi (S’98–M’00–SM’03) received the B.S.

Research on Field-Weakening Based on Reactive Power with

Bo Hu Zhouyun Zhang and Jun Gong