1502 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 27, NO.

3, MARCH 2012
An Improved Direct Torque Control for Three-Level
Inverter-Fed Induction Motor Sensorless Drive
Yongchang Zhang, Member, IEEE, Jianguo Zhu, Senior Member, IEEE, Zhengming Zhao, Senior Member, IEEE,
Wei Xu, Member, IEEE, and David G. Dorrell, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractA sensorless three-level neutral-point-clamped
inverter-fed induction motor drive is proposed in this paper. The
conventional direct torque control (DTC) switching table fails to
consider the circuit limitations, such as neutral-point-balance and
smooth vector switching, caused by the topology of a three-level
inverter. Two kinds of modied schemes for three-level DTC are
proposed to solve these problems. They also provide performance
enhancement while maintaining robustness and simplicity. Fuzzy
logic control and the speed-adaptive ux observer (with novel
gain and load toque observation) are introduced to enhance the
performance of the system. The issue of large starting current is
investigated and solved by introducing the technique of preexci-
tation. A 32-bit xed-point DSP-based motor drive is developed
to achieve high-performance sensorless control over a wide speed
range. The effectiveness of the proposed schemes is conrmed by
simulation implementation and experimental validation.
Index TermsAC motor drives, adaptive observer, fuzzy logic,
induction motor (IM) drives, speed sensorless, three-level inverter,
torque control.
I. INTRODUCTION
D
IRECT torque control (DTC) has emerged as an alterna-
tive to eld-oriented control (FOC) for high-performance
ac drives, since it was rst proposed in the mid-1980s [1], [2].
The merits of DTC can be summarized as fast torque response,
simple structure (no need of complicated coordinate transforma-
tion, current regulation, or modulation block), and robustness
against motor parameter variation [3][5].
On the other hand, multilevel inverters have attracted con-
siderable attention, especially in high-power application ar-
eas [6][9]. The three-level neutral-point-clamped (NPC) in-
verter is one of the most commonly used multilevel inverter
Manuscript received November 27, 2009; revised January 10, 2010; accepted
February 5, 2010. Date of current version February 7, 2012. This work was
supported in part by grant from the Natural Science Foundation of China under
Project 50737002. The part of this paper was presented at the Annual Confer-
ence of IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON), 35 November, 2009,
Porto Portugal. Recommended for publication by Associate Editor J. O. Ojo.
Y. Zhang was with the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology,
University of Technology, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia. He is now with the
Power Electronics and Motor Drive Engineering Center, North China University
of Technology, Beijing, 100144, China. (e-mail: yozhang@ieee.org).
J. Zhu, W. Xu, and D. G. Dorrell are with the Faculty of Engineering and In-
formation Technology, University of Technology, Sydney, NSW2007, Australia
(e-mail: joe@eng.uts.edu.au; wxu@eng.uts.edu.au; ddorrell@eng.uts.edu.au).
Z. Zhao is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, State Key Labo-
ratory of Power Systems, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China (e-mail:
zhaozm@tsinghua.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPEL.2010.2043543
topologies in high-power ac drives. Compared to the standard
two-level inverter, the three-level inverter presents its superi-
ority in terms of lower voltage distortion, lower stress across
the semiconductors, less harmonic content, and lower switch-
ing frequency [10]. Because of the merits mentioned earlier, the
three-level inverter-fed DTC motor drive has become an im-
portant research topic in industry and the academic community
over the past decades [11][19].
Compared to two-level DTC, three-level DTC motor drives
have two particular aspects. The rst is concerned with elec-
tromagnetic performance enhancement, including torque ripple
reduction and low-speed performance improvement; in a sim-
ilar manner to that of two-level DTC. The second is inherited
from the topology of three-level inverter, i.e., the neutral point
potential balance and smooth vector switching.
Neutral point unbalance will cause higher voltage in the power
semiconductors. This increases the demand of capacity so that
the cost increases. The balance of neutral point potential can be
achieved by exploiting the opposite effect of redundant vectors
on the neutral point potential [8][10].
Smooth vector switching requires that there is no excessive
voltage jumps in both phase voltage and line voltage. Phase
voltage jumps fail to utilize the advantages of three-level in-
verter and may endanger the safe operation of inverter by caus-
ing full dc voltage across one switch during transient commuta-
tion, especially when the inverter uses only one snubber circuit
for three phases. Line voltage jumps produce more harmonic
content in output voltage waveform, which is unfriendly to the
motor and increase the burden on the lter.
Most of the literature on three-level inverter DTCmotor drives
concentrates on performance improvement. These employ com-
plicated algorithms based on analytical methods [12][14], co-
ordinate transformation [15], and continuous space vector mod-
ulation [19], among others. Although good performance, such
as torque ripple reduction or xed switching frequency, was
achieved (at the expense of sacricing the simplicity of DTC),
they failed to consider the limitations caused by the circuit topol-
ogy, i.e., neutral point potential balance was sometimes not ad-
dressed and smooth vector smoothing was almost not mentioned
at all. Some paper (such as [18]) considered the allowable tran-
sitions between different vectors. However, there still exists the
possibility of undesired excessive line voltage jumps, e.g., from
++ to +00 [18, Fig. 7].
The aim of this paper is to achieve high-performance sen-
sorless DTC for a three-level inverter-fed induction motor (IM)
drive, as well as considering the neutral point potential balance
and smooth vector switching. Two kinds of DTC schemes are
0885-8993/$26.00 2010 IEEE
ZHANG et al.: IMPROVED DIRECT TORQUE CONTROL FOR THREE-LEVEL INVERTER-FED INDUCTION MOTOR SENSORLESS DRIVE 1503
Fig. 1. Main circuit of three-level inverter.
proposed to obtain high-performance control of torque and stator
ux and the switching principle is illustrated to meet the limita-
tions required by the topology of three-level inverter. As DTC
is often referred for its drawbacks of large starting-up current
and ux droop at low speed [12], [20], the technology of preex-
citation is introduced to limit the starting current [16], [21]. To
enhance the low-speed performance, especially under sensorless
operation, a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) [22] is incorporated
in the outer speed loop to improve the speed response and a
speed-adaptive ux observer with novel gain and load torque
observation [19] is employed to estimate stator ux, torque, and
rotor speed over a wide speed range. Simulations, as well as
experimental results, are presented to validate the effectiveness
of the schemes proposed in this paper.
II. PRINCIPLE OF DTC AND THREE-LEVEL INVERTER
A. Three-Level Inverter
The main circuit of a three-level inverter is illustrated in Fig. 1
and there are three states for one-phase output: +U
dc
/2, 0,
andU
dc
/2, with the neutral point as reference. To be more
universal, the negative dc bus voltage will be selected as ref-
erence ground, and the three states are indicated by 2, 1,
and 0, for +U
dc
/2, 0, and U
dc
/2, respectively. More
output levels provide more freedom in vector selection and it
is possible to synthesize waveforms that are more sinusoidal in
shape. However, the complexity of vector selection rises with
the number of vectors. In addition, there are further problems,
including neutral point balance and smooth vector switching,
which need to be carefully solved.
B. Basic Principle of DTC
A mathematical model of an IM described by space vectors
in a stationary frame can be expressed as follows:
u
s
= R
s
i
s
+ p
s
(1)
0 = R
r
i
r
+ p
r
j
r

r
(2)

s
= L
s
i
s
+ L
m
i
r
(3)

r
= L
m
i
s
+ L
r
i
r
(4)
where u
s
, i
s
, i
r
,
s
, and
r
are the stator voltage vector, stator
current vector, rotor current vector, stator ux linkage vector,
and rotor ux linkage vector, respectively; R
s
, R
r
, L
s
, L
r
, and
L
m
are the stator resistance, rotor resistance, stator inductance,
rotor inductance, and mutual inductance, respectively; and
r
is the rotor speed and p = d/dt is the differential operator.
From the stator voltage equation (1), it can be seen that, by
omitting the stator resistance voltage drop, the stator ux can
be controlled directly from the stator voltage. This is a crude
analysis and may cause error at low speed.
The electromagnetic torque can be obtained from
T
e
=
3
2
N
p
L
m
L
s
L
r

r

s
=
3
2
N
p
L
m
L
s
L
r

r

s
sin
sr
(5)
where
sr
is the spatial angle between the stator and rotor uxes,
N
p
is the motor pole-pair number, and T
e
is the electromagnetic
torque. In DTC, the amplitude of the stator ux is kept constant
and a fast torque response is obtained by changing angle
sr
quickly. From (1)(4), the relationship between the stator and
rotor uxes can be obtained as
p
r
+

1
T
r
j
r

r
=
L
m
L
s
T
r

s
(6)
where = 1 L
2
m
/(L
s
L
r
) and T
r
= L
r
/R
r
. Equation (6) in-
dicates that the dynamic response of the rotor ux is a rst-order
lag with respect to the stator ux, so the torque can be changed
quickly by changing the angle of stator ux.
III. TORQUE AND FLUX RIPPLE REDUCTION IN DTC
The conventional switching table for two-level DTC cannot
be directly extended to three-level DTC. This is because it is not
only the performance that is of concern, the limitation caused by
the topology of three-level inverter also should be considered.
Two kinds of scheme for three-level DTC are proposed in this
paper to solve these problems.
A. DTC Method I
The rst DTC scheme utilizes the vectors of the three-level
inverter directly and inserts appropriate intermediate vectors to
meet the demand of neutral point balance and smoothed vector
switching. The switching principle is described in detail in the
following.
First, the vector is selected according to the demand of the
ux and torque; vector switching and neutral point balance will
be considered later. Fig. 2 shows the space vector diagram for
a three-level DTC control strategy and its sector division. The
27 vectors are marked by V
1
,V
2
. . .V
27
. There are 12 sectors
and the shadowed area is the rst sector, which is different from
that of the conventional two-level DTC. The basic principles
of the vector selection are shown in Table I and these meet
the demands of the ux and torque; k represents the stator ux
located in kth sector. In addition, means increase, means
decrease, and = means no change is needed. It should be noted
1504 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 3, MARCH 2012
Fig. 2. Space vector diagram for the three-level DTC.
TABLE I
VECTOR SELECTION TABLE FOR THREE-LEVEL DTC
that there may exist more than two vectors to meet the demands
of the ux, and the one which meets the torque response better
is preferred.
However, in many cases, the selected vector usually cannot
meet the requirements of the vector switching and neutral point
balance, which means that the selected vector cannot be applied
to the three-level inverter directly. For example, suppose the
stator ux is located in the rst sector, and the working voltage
vector at the moment is V
1
(200). To increase the stator ux
and torque, according to Table I, V
3
(220) would be selected.
But there is a high-voltage jump in phase B from 0 to 2, which
should be avoided. In this case, V
2
(210) will be inserted as an
intermediate vector to smooth the high-voltage jump. There are
three aspects with respect to voltage jumps: 1) phase voltage
jump, 2) line voltage jump, and 3) three-phase jump at the same
time. High-voltage jump increases harmonic content and the
stress across power semiconductors, which negates the advan-
tages of the three-level inverter. To overcome this problem, an
appropriate intermediate vector should be inserted to meet the
requirement of the voltage jump.
Another issue is the problemof neutral point balance, which is
inherited from the topology of three-level inverter. Many papers
have investigated this problem. Neutral point balance is mainly
controlled by selecting appropriate small vectors [9], [10]; this
is because of the opposite effects of redundant vectors. In this
paper, we also adopt the redundant states of small vectors to
keep the neutral point balance.
The nal vector selection rules are obtained by considering
the aspects introduced earlier, and the principles are summarized
as follows.
Step I: Select vector according to the demands for ux and
torque, which are listed in Table I.
Step II: If the selected vector cannot meet the requirement
of the voltage jump and neutral point balance, an appropriate
intermediate vector will be inserted. The principles for selecting
the intermediate vectors are as follows.
1) Large vectors or middle vectors should be selected prefer-
ably to increase the utilization ratio of the dc bus.
2) Middle vectors can switch to adjacent small vectors and
large vectors freely.
3) Large vectors can switch to the small vectors in the same
spatial orientation.
4) Small vectors can switch to zero vectors freely.
5) When small vectors are available, select the one, which
can meet the requirement of neutral point balance. Using
the steps earlier, an appropriate vector can be selected to
meet the demand of the ux and torque, as well as the
requirement of voltage jump and neutral point balance,
which ensures the safe operation of the three-level inverter.
B. DTC Method II
In DTC method I, by inserting the appropriate intermedi-
ate vector, the problems of neutral point balance and smooth
vector switching were solved. However, it may degrade the
performance of torque and increase the complexity of vector
selection, so another scheme is proposed here. Method II makes
use of synthesizing vectors, which is termed discrete space vec-
tor modulation (DSVM). This was rst proposed in two-level
DTC [4], [5]. The two-level DSVM-DTC incorporates a more
complicated and accurate switching table by dividing one sam-
pling period into two or three intervals, and thus, more vectors
are obtained. In [4], speed is also taken into account and more
levels of hysteresis are adopted to make the switching table more
accurate. The benets of DSVM-DTC are reduced torque and
ux ripple at a little extra expense of computational time [4].
This paper extends DSVM to three-level DTC by using syn-
thesizing vectors and the main aim of introducing DSVM is to
solve the problems of neutral point balance and smooth vector
switching. To reduce the complexity of the algorithm, the same
structure as Table I is adopted and the speed was not taken into
account in the switching table, as in [4].
First, we should synthesize some vectors, which are expected
to solve the problems of neutral point balance and smooth
switching between any two vectors simultaneously. This means
that the vector selection, according to the need of the torque
and ux, is decoupled from the circuit limitation introduced by
the three-level topology. A series of novel synthesizing vectors
are produced, which are illustrated in Fig. 3 and marked by
V
s1
, V
s2
, . . . ,V
s12
. Take V
s1
, for example, it is synthesized
by the nearest three vectors, namely, V
1
(200), V
2
(210), and
V
13
/V
14
(100/211). The duration time of each vector can be
ZHANG et al.: IMPROVED DIRECT TORQUE CONTROL FOR THREE-LEVEL INVERTER-FED INDUCTION MOTOR SENSORLESS DRIVE 1505
Fig. 3. Synthesis vector diagram.
TABLE II
NOVEL VECTOR SYNTHESIS
calculated easily by utilizing the principle of volt-second bal-
ance. To smooth the vector switching, zero vector V
26
(111) is
incorporated at the beginning and ending of each synthesize
sequence, taking up 10% or less (depending on the minimum
pulsewidth of switches) duty of the whole period. The 12 syn-
thesizing vectors are distributed uniformly in the xed-angle
space (15

for V
s1
) with constant or variable amplitude. In this
paper, constant amplitude for the synthesis vector is selected for
simplicity, so the duration of each vector in V
s1
,V
s2
, . . . ,V
s12
can be obtained ofine and stored in a look-up table for real-
time implementation. The nal synthesizing vectors are listed in
Table II and the sector division for three-level DTC is presented
in Fig. 3, which has a 15

shift compared to that in Fig. 2. From

Table II, it is seen that the switching between any arbitrary two
vectors or adjacent vectors in a synthesis sequence are smooth.
The neutral point balance can be solved by adjusting the last-
ing time of the small vectors in one sampling period. Taking
V
s1
as an example, 211 and 100 are a pair of small vectors and
their total lasting time is xed during one sampling period,
but their individual working time can be arranged according to
the requirement of neutral point balance.
DTC method II employs the same switching table, as shown
in Table I, except that the selected vector is replaced by the novel
synthesis vector listed in Table II. For example, if the selected
vector number is k according to Table I, the synthesized vector
Fig. 4. Example of switching pattern. (a) DTC method I. (b) DTC method II.
Fig. 5. Diagram of the FLC.
V
sk
will be selected as the output vector, and number 26 means
the zero vector 111. For DTCmethod I, a further step II should be
taken before the nal vector is selected; however, this process
is not needed in method II, which simplies the selection of
vector. An example of switching pattern for the two kinds of
DTC method is illustrated in Fig. 4. It is seen that for DTC
method I, there is only one vector in one sampling period, while
there is a sequence of vectors for DTC method II, with 111 as
the beginning and ending.
IV. PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT OF DTC
To enhance the dynamic performance and steady-state accu-
racy, as well as robustness to external disturbance and motor
parameters variations, FLC is used in the outer speed loop [22].
Furthermore, a full-order speed-adaptive ux observer with
novel gains is employed in this paper, and a load torque ob-
servation is introduced to improve the dynamic response of the
speed estimation [19]. Also, the well-known problem of large
start-up current in DTC is addressed by introducing the tech-
nique of preexcitation. These three aspects are described in this
section in detail.
A. Fuzzy Logic Speed Control
FLCcan handle complicated nonlinear systems, which have a
degree of uncertainty. It does not require exact system modeling
and parameters; this makes FLC very suitable for motor drive
control [22], [23]. A classical FLC is composed of three parts:
fuzzication of input variables, fuzzy reasoning, and defuzzi-
cation. A diagram for the FLC used in this paper is illustrated
in Fig. 5. The inputs are the error between commanding value
and real value, and its derivative. The output is the control incre-
ment du, whose integral is the real output. The input and output
variables are scaled to the range of (1.4, 1.4). For the input
variables, there are seven variables dened in the fuzzy sets: PB,
1506 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 3, MARCH 2012
Fig. 6. Input membership function.
Fig. 7. Output membership function.
PM, PS, Z, NS, NM, and NB in descending order. To improve
the dynamic performance and obtain more rened output, two
other variables are added in the fuzzy sets for the output vari-
ables, i.e., PVB and NVB. Figs. 6 and 7 show the membership
functions of the inputs and the output, respectively. To obtain a
fast response for dynamic performance, and high accuracy for
steady state, the asymmetric triangle is selected as the member-
ship function, which is different from the conventional design.
Table III shows the inference rule used in this paper, which is
the key part of the FLC. By careful design of the inference rule,
excellent performance can be achieved. The mapping relation-
ship between the input and the output variable is illustrated in
Fig. 8.
B. Speed-Adaptive Flux Observer
Sensorless motor drives can work in a hostile environment,
which increases their reliability and decreases their complexity
TABLE III
RULE MATRIX OF FLC
Fig. 8. Control surface of FLC.
and the cost of the system. Hence, sensorless operation is very
attractive proposition in many industrial applications. Among
various sensorless approaches, observer-based techniques are
very popular and versatile [24]. Compared with open-loop speed
estimation techniques, the observer-based methods are more
robust to motor parameter variations because they introduce an
error feedback of the stator current estimation.
In a classical observer, the gain is such designed that the poles
of observer are proportional to those of the IM (usually a fac-
tor k > 1). This strategy of gain selection results in poles with
large imaginary parts, which may cause instability in high-speed
operation [25]. In addition, the observer gain usually contains
speed-dependent terms, which may be affected by the accuracy
of the observed speed. This paper adopts a speed-adaptive ux
observer with novel gains to improve the stability of the sys-
tem. Load torque observation is also incorporated to enhance
the dynamic response of the speed estimation [19], [25]. The
mathematical model of the observer can be expressed as follows:
p

i
s
=

1
T
s
+
1
T
r

j
r

i
s
+
1
L
s

1
T
r
j
r

s
+
1
L
s
u
s
+ G
1
(i
s


i
s
) (7)
p

s
= R
s

i
s
+u
s
+ G
2
(i
s


i
s
) (8)
p
r
=
p
J
(

T
e


T
L
) + K

[i
s
(L
r

s


i
s
)] (9)
p

T
L
= K
T
[i
s
(L
r

s


i
s
)] (10)
ZHANG et al.: IMPROVED DIRECT TORQUE CONTROL FOR THREE-LEVEL INVERTER-FED INDUCTION MOTOR SENSORLESS DRIVE 1507
where

i
s
and

s
are the estimated stator current and the es-
timated stator ux, respectively. J is the motor inertia and
T
s
= L
s
/R
s
. G
1
= (g
1r
+ jg
1i
) and G
2
= (g
2r
+ jg
2i
) are
the observer gains. k

and k
T
are positive constant gains. This
paper employs a novel observer gain [19] to improve the stability
of observer, where
g
1r
= 2b (11)
g
1i
= 0 (12)
g
2r
= L
s
b (13)
g
2i
= 0 (14)
and b is a negative constant gain.
C. Decreasing Starting Current
To decrease the starting current and maintain sufcient start-
ing torque, preexcitation of the stator ux is proposed in this
paper. For an open-loop V /f motor drive, the starting current
is restricted by switching between nonzero and zero vectors
according to the error between the reference and measured cur-
rents [21]. It cannot control the stator ux accurately because
no observer or estimator is employed to obtain the stator ux as
a feedback.
In the system proposed here, as an adaptive ux observer
is incorporated in the system, the stator ux can be controlled
accurately and achieve the preexcitation in the true sense. It
should be noted that current limitation is needed and it works
only during the preexcitation process, because the magnetization
process without current limitation still produces undesired large
current. However, the current limit in the preexcitation does
not have to be large to produce the needed stator ux. The
amplitude of current limitation only affects the lasting time of
preexcitation. In this paper, the current limit it set to be 80% of
rated current. During the preexcitation process, when the current
exceeds the limitation setting, a zero vector will be selected to
reduce the current; otherwise a xed vector will be selected to
produce stator ux, which acts in a bang-bang fashion. When
stator ux tilts the lower limit of ux hysteresis, the process of
preexcitation is terminated and the motor can start with sufcient
torque by DTC, because there is sufcient ux to produce torque.
In all, the three-level DTC drive can restrict the start-up cur-
rent effectively and establish accurate stator ux at the same
time, which benets from the ux observation employed in the
system.
V. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
To validate the effectiveness of the two DTC methods, a
three-level DTC motor drive was developed and experimental
results are presented here. The sensorless three-level DTC drive
is illustrated in Fig. 9. FLC is employed in the outer speed loop
for speed control, and a speed-adaptive ux observer with load
torque observation is used to estimate the rotor speed, stator
ux, and torque. The estimated states are fed back to the outer
loop of speed, ux, and torque. The systemparameters are listed
in Table IV. The motor inertia is 0.05 kg m
2
, and the sampling
Fig. 9. Sensorless three-level DTC drive.
TABLE IV
SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENT PARAMETERS
Fig. 10. Starting response of DTC method I with preexcitation.
frequency of systemfor DTCmethod I and II are 30 and 10 kHz,
respectively.
A. Simulation Results
Figs. 10 and 11 show the starting response for DTC method
I from 0 to 1200 r/min, and with and without preexcitation,
respectively. In Fig. 10, the stator ux is rst established by using
the preexcitation technique, which can be seen from the upper
half in Fig. 10. The motor then accelerates up to 1200 r/min with
the permitted maximum torque. The maximum starting current
is restricted to 7.5 A; this value reaches almost 27 A without
1508 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 3, MARCH 2012
Fig. 11. Starting response of DTC method I without preexcitation.
Fig. 12. Starting response of DTC method II with preexcitation.
preexcitation, as shown in Fig. 11. For DTC method II, similar
results (presented in Figs. 12 and 13) can be obtained, which
proves the effectiveness of preexcitation technique. The stator
ux is established with current limitation before starting the
motor, so sufcient torque can be produced, which may result
better dynamic performance. However, the dynamic response
difference between the one with and without preexcitation is
not signicant, if the preexcitation time is excluded; this is
because the stator ux can be established in several milliseconds,
unfortunately, at the expense of large current, which can be seen
in Figs. 11 and 13.
B. Hardware Implementation
An experimental prototype has been developed to implement
the sensorless three-level DTC drive, including four compo-
nents: the three-level inverter, a 2.2 kW motor generator, a
TMS320F2812 DSP-based control and sampling board, and a
6RA70 controller, which are illustrated in Fig. 14(a)(d), respec-
tively. The TMS320F2812 is a xed-point 32-bit DSP charac-
terized by powerful computation ability, and it is very suitable
Fig. 13. Starting response of DTC method II without preexcitation.
Fig. 14. Experimental setup of three-level DTCdrive. (a) Three-level inverter.
(b) DSP control board. (c) 2.2 kW motor generator. (d) 6RA70 controller.
for digital control of a motor drive. The IQmath library and C
language were adopted for high precision and fast computation.
There are many peripheral resources in the DSP, including a
high-speed AD converter, two event managers (EVs), rich com-
munication interfaces, etc. These facilitate the development of
the motor control. A CPLD EPM7256AE was also incorporated
in the control board to implement dead time, pulse manage-
ment, and to generate the nal 12 triggering pulses. The DSP
controller provides a sufcient ability for intensive computa-
tions, and it only needs 3.2 s to fulll the computation of the
speed-adaptive observer. The 6RA70 controller is used to apply
the external load and implement four-quadrant operation.
C. Experimental Results
The experimental results were obtained from a three-level
inverter-fed sensorless DTC motor drive. Various operational
characteristics were investigated, such as the starting response,
ZHANG et al.: IMPROVED DIRECT TORQUE CONTROL FOR THREE-LEVEL INVERTER-FED INDUCTION MOTOR SENSORLESS DRIVE 1509
Fig. 15. Starting response without preexcitation for DTC method I.
Fig. 16. Starting response with preexcitation for DTC method I.
response to external disturbance, steady-state response, and low-
speed operation with and without load. All internal variables,
such as stator ux, torque, estimated speed, and real speed, were
viewed and recorded through a four-channel DAconverter in the
DSP control board. The line current and voltage was recorded
using a voltage probe and current sensor. It should be noted that
the real speed was obtained from an encoder mounted on the
motor; this was used only for data logging and comparison.
The starting response was rst investigated. Figs. 15 and 16
show the starting response using DTC method I over a speed
range from 0 to 1500 r/min, and with and without preexcitation.
From top to bottom, the curves in Fig. 15 are the real and
estimated speeds, the estimated stator ux and torque, the line
voltage, and the line current. It can be seen that if the motor starts
directly, there is large starting current, and the peak reaches 15
A. By rst establishing the stator ux (preexcitation), the motor
can still start with sufcient torque, but the peak current is now
only 9 A; hence validating the preexcitation technique. Similar
results can be found in Figs. 17 and 18 for DTC method II.
The performance under external disturbance was investigated
in the following. Full load was applied and then removed sud-
denly when the motor was operating at 1500 r/min. For DTC
method I, the results are presented in Fig. 19. It can be seen
Fig. 17. Starting response without preexcitation for DTC method II.
Fig. 18. Starting response without preexcitation for DTC method II.
Fig. 19. Response to external load disturbance for DTC method I.
that the torque responded quickly and the stator ux was kept
constant. There was only a slight drop in speed response. This
illustrates that the system exhibits strong robustness to external
disturbance. For DTC method II, there is greater speed drop,
as shown in Fig 20. Analysis reveals the reason for this is that
the synthesis vector amplitude is not high enough to provide
sufcient output torque. This can be overcome by increasing
1510 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 3, MARCH 2012
Fig. 20. Response to external load disturbance for DTC method II.
Fig. 21. Zoomed line voltage at 1500 r/min for DTC method I.
Fig. 22. Zoomed line voltage at 1500 r/min for DTC method II.
the synthesis vector amplitudes, or the value of dc bus. A more
exible scheme is achieved by adjusting the synthesis vector
amplitudes according to the range of speed and load condition.
However, it can be seen that during the dynamic period, the
estimated speed follows the real speed exactly, hence validating
the effectiveness of the proposed observer.
Both methods can achieve smooth vector switching, as illus-
trated in Fig. 21 for DTC method I and Fig. 22 for DTC method
Fig. 23. Upper and lower capacitor voltage during the deceleration and accel-
eration for DTC method I.
Fig. 24. Upper and lower capacitor voltage during the deceleration and accel-
eration for DTC method II.
II. It can be observed that there is no high-voltage jump in the
line voltage, which proves that the proposed optimal switching
table and the principles of the vector selection are correct. The
voltages across the upper and lower capacitor during the motor
deceleration and acceleration is presented in Figs. 23 and 24, for
DTC method I and DTC method II, respectively. The capacitor
voltage variations are caused by the energy ow between the
motor and the capacitor in the dynamic process. It can be seen
their values are almost the same during the dynamic and steady
process, which validate the effectiveness of the neutral-point-
balance algorithm.
The nal investigation addressed the performance under low-
speed operating conditions. Fig. 25 shows the steady operation
at 60 r/min for DTC method I. It can be seen that the estimated
and real speeds exactly match. The sensorless drive can work
down to 30 r/min with full load, as illustrated in Fig. 26. This
shows excellent performance in the low-speed range. For DTC
method II, the sensorless drive can work at even lower speed.
Figs. 27 and 28 illustrate that the system can operate down to 6
r/min without load and 30 r/min with 80% rated load. It should
be noted that the ripple in the real speed shown in Fig. 27 was
due to the speed measurement method, where there was a limited
ZHANG et al.: IMPROVED DIRECT TORQUE CONTROL FOR THREE-LEVEL INVERTER-FED INDUCTION MOTOR SENSORLESS DRIVE 1511
Fig. 25. Steady state of 60 r/min without load for DTC method I.
Fig. 26. Steady state of 30 r/min with full load for DTC method I.
Fig. 27. Steady state of 6 r/min without load for DTC method II.
pulse number from the shaft encoder. This was especially true
at low speed, and this gave an error in the recorded actual speed.
The motor operated at a steady speed in the experimental test.
This was conrmed by the waveform of current and estimated
speed. It can be seen that there are only slight oscillations in the
estimated speed, and the stator ux is smooth and steady.
Fig. 28. Steady state of 30 r/min with 80% rated load for DTC method II.
D. Performance Analysis
The two DTC methods have different switching character-
istics, so it is not easy to compare the switching frequency
thoroughly and fairly. The rst DTC method has variable and
relatively low-switching frequency under the same sampling fre-
quency, compared to the second one, because only one vector is
selected during one sampling period. For DTC method II, there
are 16 leg state changes for the whole 12 switches during one
sampling period, so the mean switching frequency is constant,
i.e., 2/3 of the sampling frequency. For example, at the steady
state of 1500 r/min without load, the mean switching frequency
for DTC method I and II are 2.1 and 6.67 kHz, respectively, so
DTC method I has less switching loss. However, lots of logi-
cal judgments are needed in DTC method I to obtain the nal
optimized vector, because it has to consider the effects of neu-
tral point balance and smooth vector switching. This problem is
simplied in the second DTC method with the help of DSVM,
so the control of torque and ux is decoupled from the control
of neutral point balance and vector switching, resulting better
low-speed performance (as low as 6 r/min shown in Fig. 27).
VI. CONCLUSION
Two kinds of modied DTC schemes have been proposed in
this paper and both achieve high-performance sensorless con-
trol of a three-level inverter-fed motor drive. They both work
over a wide speed range and overcome the limitations caused
by the topology of the three-level inverter. By using appropri-
ate intermediate vectors, the problems of neutral point balance
and smooth vector switching are solved. Furthermore, a novel
vector synthesis sequence was proposed and this decoupled the
performance control from the circuit limitation. A FLC and a
speed-adaptive ux observer were incorporated in the sensor-
less drive to enhance the performance of system. In addition,
the issue of large starting current are investigated and solved
by introducing the technique of preexcitation. Very low speed
sensorless operation of 6 r/min was demonstrated. Simulations
as well as experimental results were presented to verify the
effectiveness of the proposed schemes.
1512 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 3, MARCH 2012
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Yongchang Zhang (M10) received the B.S. degree
from Chongqing University, Chongqing, China, in
2004, and the Ph.D. degree fromTsinghua University,
Beijing, China, in 2009, respectively, both in electri-
cal engineering.
He was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Uni-
versity of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Since August 2011, he has been a faculty member
of North China University of Technology, Beijing,
China. His research interests include sensorless and
high-performance control of ac motor drives, control
of multilevel converters, optimal pulsewidth modulation, pulsewidth modula-
tion rectier, and advanced digital control with realtime implementation.
Jianguo Zhu (S93M96SM03) received the B.E.
degree fromJiangsu Institute of Technology, Jiangsu,
China, in 1982, the M.E. degree from Shanghai Uni-
versity of Technology, Shanghai, China, in 1987,
and the Ph.D degree from University of Technology,
Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia, in 1995.
He is currently a Professor of electrical engineer-
ing and Head for School of Electrical, Mechanical,
and Mechatronic Systems, UTS. His research inter-
ests include electromagnetics, magnetic properties of
materials, electrical machines and drives, power elec-
tronics, and renewable energy systems.
Zhengming Zhao (M02SM03) received the B.Sc.
and M.Sc. degrees, both in electrical engineering,
from Hunan University, Hunan, China, in 1982
and 1985, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1991.
In 1993, he was in the Department of Electri-
cal Engineering, Tsinghua University as an Asso-
ciate Professor in 1993 and a Full Professor in 1999.
From 1994 to 1996, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at
the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, and then,
joined in the University of California at Irvine as a
Visiting Scholar for one year. In 1998, he joined as a Visiting Scholar for three
months at the University of British Columbia, BC, Canada and in 1999, he
was invited to Hong Kong University as a Research Assistant Professor for
another three months. He is currently the Deputy Chairman of the Electrical
Engineering Department, Tsinghua University and a Vice Director of the Na-
tional Key Laboratory on power system. His research interests include power
electronics, motor design and drive, integration of drive system, and solar energy
applications.
ZHANG et al.: IMPROVED DIRECT TORQUE CONTROL FOR THREE-LEVEL INVERTER-FED INDUCTION MOTOR SENSORLESS DRIVE 1513
Wei Xu (M09) received the B.E. and M.E. degrees
from Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, in 2002 and
2005, and the Ph.D. degree fromthe Institute of Elec-
trical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China, in 2008, respectively, all in electrical
engineering.
He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellowin the Center
for Electric Machine and Power Electronics, Univer-
sity of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia.
His research interests include electromagnetic design
and performance analysis of linear machine, perma-
nent magnet machine, and switched reluctance machine.
David G. Dorrell (M95SM08) received the
B.Eng. (Hons.) degree in electrical and electronic en-
gineering from the University of Leeds, Leeds, U.K.,
in 1988, the M.Sc. degree from the University of
Bradford, Bradford, U.K., in power electronics en-
gineering, in 1989, and the Ph.D. degree from the
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., in engi-
neering, in 1993.
He was a Lecturer with the Robert Gordon Univer-
sity and the University of Reading. He was a Senior
Lecturer with the University of Glasgow, U.K. for
several years. He is currently an Associate Professor with the University of
Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia. He is also an Adjunct Associate Pro-
fessor with the National Cheng Kung University, Tainan City, Taiwan. He has
authored or coauthored more than 100 technical publications. His research in-
terests include the design and analysis of various electrical machines and also
renewable energy systems.
Dr. Dorrell is a Charter Engineer in U.K. and a Fellow of the Institution of
Engineering and Technology.