9356 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 65, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2018

Generalized Multiple-Vector-Based Model

Predictive Control for PMSM Drives
Yongchang Zhang , Senior Member, IEEE, Donglin Xu, and Lanlan Huang

Abstract—Model predictive control (MPC) is emerging as selects the best voltage vector by minimizing a cost function
a powerful control method for the high performance control rather than using the heuristic switching table in DTC. Further-
of permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives more, MPC can easily handle multivariable control and consider
due to its merits of simple principle, quick response, and
flexibility to handle multiple variables and constraints. How- various nonlinear constraints, featuring high flexibility [9], [10].
ever, conventional MPC applies only one voltage vector In spite of the advantages of MPC, it also has some drawbacks.
during one control period to minimize the cost function, As only one voltage vector is applied during one control period,
which produces relatively high steady-state ripples and high it produces relatively high steady-state ripples and the current
computational burden due to the enumeration-based pre-
harmonics are distributed over a wide frequency range [11].
dictions. Introducing duty cycle control into MPC can im-
prove its steady-state performance, but the control com- Furthermore, the cost function is evaluated for each converter
plexity is further increased. This paper proposes a gener- voltage vector, which is computational intensive and poses high
alized multiple-vector-based MPC for PMSM drives, which computational burden on the hardware [4], [7].
unifies the prior MPC methods in one frame with much lower To cope with the problems of conventional MPC, various
complexity and computational burden by eliminating the
improved MPC methods have been proposed in the literature.
enumeration-based predictions and complex calculations
in conventional MPC methods. This is achieved by recon- The steady-state performance of conventional MPC can be im-
structing the three-phase duties obtained from the classical proved by applying one nonzero vector and a zero vector dur-
deadbeat control with modulator, which also reveals the in- ing one control period [4], [7], [12], where the duration of the
herent relationship between deadbeat control and the pro- nonzero vector is determined based on certain principle, such
posed MPC methods. The presented experimental results
as current error minimization [4]. Recent study shows that,
confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.
at high speeds, the optimal vector combination is not neces-
Index Terms—AC motor drives, current control, predictive sarily a nonzero vector and a zero vector, but possibly two
control, synchronous motor drives. nonzero voltage vectors [13]. By relaxing the restriction on the
I. INTRODUCTION second voltage vector, it is shown that the steady-state perfor-
mance can be further improved. However, the control complex-
HE permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives
T are receiving more and more attention in the industry ap-
plications due to the merits of high torque/power density, high
ity is also increased because of the increased number of vector
combinations.
In fact, reducing the high computational burden caused by
efficiency, and high reliability [1]. In the past, vector control enumeration-based predictions has become an important issue
(VC) and direct torque control (DTC) are the two conventional for conventional MPC [14]. In [7] and [15], the required pre-
high performance control methods for PMSM drives [2], [3]. dictions are reduced from seven to one by identifying the po-
Recently model predictive control (MPC) is emerging as a sition of the current error vector caused by the zero voltage
powerful alternative to conventional VC and DTC [4]–[8]. It vector. The nonzero vector that is closest to the error vector
eliminates the current regulators and PWM block in VC and is the best one among all nonzero voltage vectors. The current
error caused by the best nonzero vector is further compared
Manuscript received August 3, 2017; revised November 11, 2017, De- with the error vector caused by the zero vector and the one
cember 6, 2017, and January 30, 2018; accepted February 26, 2018. having lower error amplitude is the final optimal voltage vec-
Date of publication March 9, 2018; date of current version July 30, 2018. tor. The principle of deadbeat control can also be used to find
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China under Grant 51577003 and in part by Beijing Natu- the optimal voltage vector quickly. In [16] and [17], the ref-
ral Science Foundation under Grant 3162012. (Corresponding author: erence voltage vector nullifying the current error at the end of
Yongchang Zhang.) next control period is first calculated and the one that has min-
The authors are with the Inverter Technologies Engineering Research
Center of Beijing, North China University of Technology, Beijing 100144, imal distance to the reference voltage vector is selected as the
China, with the Collaborative Innovation Center of Electric Vehicles in best voltage vector. It is shown that the MPC with quick volt-
Beijing , Beijing 100192, China, and also with the Collaborative Innova- age vector selection is essentially equivalent to conventional
tion Center of Key Power Energy-Saving Technologies in Beijing, Beijing
100144, China (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; MPC by showing similar or even the same performance [16],
[email protected]). [17]. As only one voltage vector is selected and applied dur-
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available ing one control period, the steady-state performance is still not
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2018.2813994 satisfactory.

0278-0046 © 2018 IEEE. Translations and content mining are permitted for academic research only. Personal use is also permitted, but republication/redistribution
requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
ZHANG et al.: GENERALIZED MULTIPLE-VECTOR-BASED MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROL FOR PMSM DRIVES 9357

It is desirable to combine the merits of duty cycle control and II. MODEL OF PMSM
quick voltage vector selection in MPC [18]. Furthermore, so far
In this paper, a surface-mounted PMSM (SPMSM) with equal
the improved MPC methods introduced above are studied sepa- d-axis and q-axis inductance is studied. To reduce the control
rately and implemented in various frames. This paper proposes
complexity, the model of PMSM in stationary αβ frame is
a generalized multiple-vector-based MPC, which unifies the
preferred to avoid synchronous transformation. The model of
conventional MPC [9], [19] (refereed as conventional MPC I) PMSM is expressed using complex vectors as [1]
and MPC with duty cycle control [13] (refereed as conven-
tional MPC II) in one frame and achieves similar performance dψ s
us = Rs is + (1)
to its counterpart applying the same voltage vectors during one dt
control period. However, the control complexity is significantly ψ s = Ls is + ψ r (2)
reduced by avoiding the enumeration-based predictions in con-
3
ventional MPC methods. Both optimal vector combination and Te = pψ s ⊗ is (3)
optimal vector duration can be obtained in a very efficient way 2
by simply reconstructing the three-phase duties from deadbeat where ψ r = ψf ej θ e is the rotor flux vector; Rs , Ls , ψf , ψ s ,
control with modulator, which is much easier to understand and us , is , θe , and p are stator resistance, synchronous inductance,
implement. permanent magnet flux, stator flux vector, stator voltage vector,
The principle of the presented method can be extended to stator current vector, electrical rotor angle, and number of pole
other kinds of ac machines, such as induction machine (IM) pairs, respectively; ωr = dθe /dt is the electrical rotor speed.
drives, as described in [20]. However, there are noticeable dif- The machine equations of PMSM can be rearranged in the
ferences and new contribution in this paper compared with [20]. standard state-space form as
For an IM drive in [20], torque and stator flux are selected as the
dis 1
control variable while in this paper stator current is the control = (us − Rs is − jωr ψ r ) . (4)
dt Ls
variable. As torque and stator flux are different in amplitude
and unit, an additional conversion is carried out first to obtain III. PROPOSED MPC
an equivalent stator flux vector in [20], and then the reference
voltage vector is calculated based on deadbeat flux control. It Different from conventional MPC and prior MPC with duty
is evidently more difficult for IM drive to obtain the reference cycle control (called conventional MPC I and conventional
voltage vector. On the contrary, it is much simpler for PMSM MPC II in the following texts), this paper proposes a general-
to achieve deadbeat control of stator current, because no addi- ized multiple-vector-based MPC. The enumeration-based pre-
tional conversion is required. Furthermore, as the stator flux and dictions are avoided and both conventional MPC and prior MPC
torque are not measurable in an IM drive, a relatively compli- with duty cycle control are unified in one frame. The control di-
cated and sophisticated full order observer is employed in [20] agram of the proposed MPC is shown in Fig. 1, where the d-axis
to estimate the stator flux and current, which is not only compu- reference current is set to zero to achieve maximum torque per
tational intensive but also requires all the knowledge of machine ampere operation and the q-axis reference current is generated
parameters. For a PMSM drive in this paper, we use a relatively by a PI controller in an outer speed control loop. The refer-
simple open-loop estimator to estimate the back EMF, which ence voltage vector is first calculated based on the principle of
avoids the use of rotor speed/position and is robust against the deadbeat current control, which requires the knowledge of sta-
machine parameter variations. tor current and back electromotive force (EMF). After obtaining
Regarding the principle of the proposed generalized multiple- the reference voltage vector, the three-phase duties can be easily
vector-based MPC in this paper, the method in [20] adopts clas- calculated based on the principle of SVM or sinusoidal PWM.
sical space vector modulation (SVM) to obtain the voltage vec- Finally, two kinds of MPC methods are implemented in the
tors and vector duration, while in this paper the carrier-based frame of the proposed multiple-vector-based MPC, where MPC
PWM is used to calculate the three-phase duty cycles directly, I is equivalent to conventional MPC and MPC II is equivalent to
which is much simpler and easier to understand. Furthermore, conventional MPC with duty cycle. It is shown that both MPC I
in [20] it only the studies the case of double-vector based MPC and MPC II can be easily obtained by reconstructing the three-
(similar to MPC II in this paper) and the mathematical proof is phase duties from the proposed MPC method. Hence, they are
relatively tedious and not intuitive. In this paper, both conven- unified in one frame and do not require the enumeration-based
tional FCS-MPC (MPC I) and double-vector-based MPC (MPC predictions. The details of each block in Fig. 1 are introduced
II) are investigated with stricter and clearer mathematical proof, in the following texts.
more intuitive illustration and detailed analysis. For example,
the distribution of optimal vector combination in the whole A. Back EMF Estimation
complex plane for the proposed MPC I and MPC II is clearly By applying bilinear transformation to (4) from k − 1 instant
shown with intuitive illustrations and the switching frequency to k instant, the back electromotive force E = jωr ψ r can be
variation with the speed for MPC II can be easily explained. obtained as [13]
The experimental results from a 2.4 kW PMSM drive con-
iks + iks −1 Ls  k 
firm the theoretical study and the effectiveness of the proposed E k −1 = uks −1 − Rs − is − iks −1 (5)
method. 2 Tsc
9358 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 65, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2018

Fig. 1. Control diagram of proposed generalized multiple-vector-based MPC.

where Tsc is the control period.

Similarly, the back EMF E at k − 2 and k − 3 instant can be
obtained as

iks −1 + iks −2 Ls  k −1 
E k −2 = uks −2 − Rs − is − iks −2 (6)
2 Tsc
iks −2 + iks −3 Ls  k −2 
E k −3 = uks −3 − Rs − is − iks −3 . (7)
2 Tsc

As E is proportional to mechanical speed, which has a much

larger time constant than the electromagnetic time constant, it
is reasonable to assume E as constant over several successive
control periods, namely E k = E k −1 = E k −2 = E k −3 . Hence,
the value of E k at k instant can be obtained as a mean value of
E in the past three control periods, which is expressed as [4]
Fig. 2. Simulated steady-state response of the proposed MPC II at
1  k −1 
Ek = E + E k −2 + E k −3 . (8) rated speed with mismatched machine parameters.
3
One of the main advantages of using (8) is that it avoids the
use of accurate machine parameters and rotor speed as well
as rotor position. As a result, it has strong robustness against
the machine parameter variations. Take the proposed MPC II
(which will be introduced in Section III-C) as an example, when
the stator resistance and permanent magnet flux in the controller
are increased or decreased by 50% compared with their actual
value, the steady-state performance at rated speed is only slightly
affected, as shown in Fig. 2. A detailed analysis on the robustness
of the back EMF estimator in (8) can be found in [21], which is
not expanded in this paper due to page limitations. Fig. 3. Three-phase duty cycles and vector duration (in p.u.) in the first
sector for SVM and CBPWM.

B. Calculation of Reference Voltage Vector and

Three-Phase Duties reference voltage vector is obtained as
According to (4), the voltage vector applied during k and iref Ls  ref 
s + is
k
k + 1 instant can be obtained as uref
s = Rs + i − iks + E k . (10)
2 Tsc s
iks +1 + iks Ls  k +1  After obtaining the reference voltage vector, the three-phase
uks = Rs + is − iks + E k . (9) duties can be easily obtained based on the principle of SVM
2 Tsc
or carrier-based PWM (CBPWM) [22]–[24]. By using nonsi-
In this paper, the reference voltage vector is such calculated nusoidal modulation signals rather than sinusoidal modulation
that the stator current iks +1 in the next instant will be equal to signals, the CBPWM can achieve higher output voltage ability
the current reference iref
s . By replacing is
k +1
with iref
s in (9), the and become completely equivalent to conventional SVM [23],
ZHANG et al.: GENERALIZED MULTIPLE-VECTOR-BASED MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROL FOR PMSM DRIVES 9359

TABLE I
THREE VOLTAGE VECTORS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE DURATION IN VARIOUS SECTORS

Sorting relationship da > db > dc db > da > dc db > dc > da dc > db > da dc > da > db da > dc > db
Sector S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6

Active vector I u1 (100) u2 (110) u3 (010) u4 (011) u5 (001) u6 (101)

Active vector II u2 (110) u3 (010) u4 (011) u5 (001) u6 (101) u1 (100)
Zero vector u0 (000) u0 (000) u0 (000) u0 (000) u0 (000) u0 (000)
Duration of active vector I (da − db ) · T s c (da − dc ) · T s c (db − dc ) · T s c (db − da ) · T s c (dc − da ) · T s c (dc − db ) · T s c
Duration of active vector II (db − dc ) · T s c (db − da ) · T s c (dc − da ) · T s c (dc − db ) · T s c (da − db ) · T s c (da − dc ) · T s c
Duration of zero vector T s c − t1 − t2 T s c − t1 − t2 T s c − t1 − t2 T s c − t1 − t2 T s c − t1 − t2 T s c − t1 − t2

[24]. As CBPWM is easier to understand and implement in dig-

ital platform than SVM, in this paper the CBPWM introduced in
[23] is employed to obtain the three-phase duty cycles, selected
vectors, and vector duration.
The original sinusoidal modulation signals (ua , ub , and uc )
in per unit is calculated from the reference voltage vector urefs
as
⎧ 2
⎨ ua = √3 · m · cos θ
⎪

ub = √23 · m · cos θ − 2π 3 (11)
⎪
⎩
uc = −Ua − Ub
 ref   √ 
where θ = ∠uref  
s is the angle of us and m = us / Udc / 3
ref

is the modulation index (0 ≤ m ≤ 1).

Under the assumption that the reference voltage vector uref s
is located in the first sector S1 , the three voltage vectors to Fig. 4. Three-phase duties in the whole complex plane.
s will be u1 (100), u2 (110), and u0 (000), and
synthesize uref
their respective duration are t1 , t2 , and t0 during one control
period or d1 , d2 , and d0 in per unit, as shown in Fig. 3. The
three-phase duty cycles da , db , and dc are calculated from their According to Fig. 3, it is easy to see that da > db > dc as the
modulation signals as relationship among the three modulation signals is u∗a > u∗b >
⎧ u ∗a +1 u∗c in the first sector. The duration of each voltage vector during
⎨ da = ∗ 2 = d1 + d2 + k0 · d0
⎪
one control period is obtained from the three-phase duties as
u +1
db = b 2 = d2 + k0 · d0 (12) ⎧
⎪
⎩ u ∗c +1
dc = 2 = k0 · d0 ⎨ t1 = (da − db ) · Tsc
⎪
t2 = (db − dc ) · Tsc . (16)
where k0 is the portion of u7 (111) in the duration of zero vectors ⎪
⎩
t0 = Tsc − t1 − t2
u0 (000) and u7 (111) (0 ≤ k0 ≤ 1); u∗a,b,c is the new modula-
tion signals compared with the original sinusoidal modulation By repeating the procedures above for each sector, the three
signals ua,b,c in (11). voltage vectors and their respective duration can be obtained in a
To be equivalent to conventional SVM, u∗a,b,c has been mod- similar way, which are vividly illustrated in Fig. 4. In fact, there
ified and it has the following relationship with ua,b,c : is a one-to-one match between the sorting relationship of three-
phase duties and the locating sector of urefs , which determines
u∗a,b,c = ua,b,c + uz (13) the corresponding three voltage vectors and their respective du-
where uz is the zero sequence or common mode component. ration. The results are summarized in Table I. The zero sequence
From Fig. 3, the vector duration d1 , d2 , and d0 can be calcu- component uz in each sector can be expressed using one unified
lated from the modulation signals u∗a,b,c as formula as [23]
⎧ 1 ∗ ∗ 1 uz = 2k0 − 1 − k0 umax + (k0 − 1)umin (17)
⎨ d1 = 2 (ua − ub ) = 2 (ua − ub )
⎪
d2 = 12 (u∗b − u∗c ) = 12 (ub − uc ) . (14) where umax and umin are the maximum and minimum value
⎪
⎩ among the original modulation signals ua,b,c . In classical SVM,
1
d0 = 1 − d1 − d2 = 1 − 2 (ua − uc )
k0 is simply set as 0.5 [23]. More details regarding the zero
By substituting (14) into (12), the zero sequence component sequence component of CBPWM and the relationship between
in (13) is obtained as CBPWM and SVM can be found in [23] and [24], which will
uz = 2k0 − 1 − k0 ua + (k0 − 1)uc . (15) not be expanded here due to the page limitation.
9360 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 65, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2018

C. Optimal Vector Selection and Vector Duration TABLE II

OPTIMAL VECTOR AND DURATION IN THE PROPOSED MPC I
In conventional MPC for PMSM drives, the control aim is WHEN ure f
s IS IN THE FIRST SECTOR
to minimize the current error, which can be expressed in the
following cost function [11]: Vector and t0 > t1 > t2 >
duration max(t1 , t2 ) max(t0 , t2 ) max (t0 , t1 )
 
k +1 2
cJ = iref
s − is Optimal vector u0 u1 u2
Duration Ts c Ts c Ts c
s.t.us ∈ {u1 . . . . . . u6 , u0,7 } . (18)

There are various ways to select the optimal voltage vector

for the minimization of the cost function (18). In conventional the entire control period are
⎧
⎨ uε0 = us Tsc − u0 Tsc = u1 t1 + u2 t2
⎪
MPC [9], [19], the enumeration-based predictions are employed ref

to find the optimal voltage vector, which is computational in- uε1 = uref
s Tsc − u1 Tsc = u1 (t1 − Tsc ) + u2 t2 . (22)
tensive. However, in some improved MPC methods [7], [15], ⎪
⎩
[17], the number of required predictions can be significantly uε2 = uref
s Tsc − u2 Tsc = u1 t1 + u2 (t2 − Tsc )

reduced. In this paper, the reference voltage vector is first calcu- Considering |u1 | = |u2 |, the squared volt–second error for
lated based on the principle of deadbeat current control, which uε0 is
only requires one calculation and avoid the enumeration-based
predictions. The next step is to find appropriate voltage vectors |uε0 |2 = u∗ε0 uε0 = (u1 t1 + u2 t2 )∗ (u1 t1 + u2 t2 )
and their optimal duration to approximate the voltage vector ref- = |u1 |2 t21 + |u2 |2 t22 + (u∗1 u2 + u∗2 u1 )t1 t2
erence. In other words, the proposed method tries to minimize
π
the voltage error rather than the current error. The implied cost = |u1 |2 t21 + |u2 |2 t22 + 2 |u1 | |u2 | cos t1 t2
function of the proposed method can be obtained by subtracting 3
2 2 2

(9) from (10) as = |u1 | t1 + t1 t2 + t2 . (23)
 
k 2
In a similar way, the squared volt–second errors for uε1 and uε2
J1 = uref
s − us are
 
k +1 2
 
= k iref
s − is (19) |uε1 |2 = |u1 |2 t21 + t22 + Tsc
2
+ t1 t2 − 2t1 Tsc − t2 Tsc
  .
|uε2 |2 = |u1 |2 t21 + t22 + Tsc
2
+ t1 t2 − t1 Tsc − 2t2 Tsc
where k = (Rs /2 + Ls /Tsc )2 . It is clearly seen that the cost (24)
function (19) of the proposed MPC is proportional to the cost
function (18) of conventional MPC. This proves that using volt- It is not easy to directly compare the value of |uε0 |2 , |uε1 |2 ,
age vector error minimization is essentially the same as prior and |uε2 |2 , but we can easily obtain their difference to each
MPC methods in terms of cost function. The remaining work other, which are expressed as
is to find appropriate voltage vectors and their optimal dura- ⎧ 2 2 2
tion to produce minimal volt–second error during one control ⎨ |uε1 | − |uε0 | = |u1 | Tsc (t0 − t1 )
⎪
period. In this paper, two kinds of MPC methods are proposed |uε2 |2 − |uε0 |2 = |u1 |2 Tsc (t0 − t2 ) . (25)
⎪
⎩ 2 2 2
and implemented in one unified frame, which are introduced as |uε2 | − |uε1 | = |u1 | Tsc (t1 − t2 )
follows.
1) Proposed MPC I: The proposed MPC I is equivalent to
From (25), it is easy to find that if t0 = max(t0 , t1 , t2 ),
conventional MPC by applying only one voltage vector during |uε1 |2 − |uε0 |2 > 0 and |uε2 |2 − |uε0 |2 > 0, which means that
one control period. However, different from the enumeration- |uε0 | is smaller than both |uε1 | and |uε2 |. According to (22), as
based predictions in conventional MPC, the optimal voltage uε0 is the volt–second error between reference voltage vector
vector is simply obtained by selecting the voltage vector having s and the zero voltage vector u0 when they are applied for the
uref
the longest duration among all three voltage vectors to synthe- whole control period, it is evident that u0 is the one minimizing
size uref the cost function (19). In a similar way, we can confirm that the
s .
To confirm this conclusion, we will take the first sector as an voltage vector having the longest duration would be the optimal
example. The three voltage vectors are u1 (100), u2 (110), and voltage vector minimizing (19) when only one voltage vector is
u0 (000), and their respective duration are t1 , t2 , and t0 , which applied during one control period. The results are summarized
follow the principle of volt–second balance, namely in Table II. It will be shown that the proposed MPC I is com-
pletely equivalent to conventional MPC, but selects the optimal
voltage vector in a different way. The distribution of the optimal
uref
s Tsc = u1 t1 + u2 t2 + u0 t0 (20)
voltage vector in the whole complex vector plane is illustrated
Tsc = t1 + t2 + t0 . (21) in Fig. 5.
2) Proposed MPC II: In MPC II, two voltage vectors are
The volt–second errors (uε0 , uε1 , and uε2 ) caused by the applied during one control period to achieve better steady-state
three voltage vectors (u0 , u1 , and u2 ) when they are applied in performance than a conventional MPC. The proposed MPC II is
ZHANG et al.: GENERALIZED MULTIPLE-VECTOR-BASED MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROL FOR PMSM DRIVES 9361

TABLE III
OPTIMAL VECTOR COMBINATION AND VECTOR DURATION IN THE PROPOSED
MPC II WHEN ure f
s IS IN THE FIRST SECTOR

Vector and t0 < min (t1 , t2 ) t1 < min (t0 , t2 ) t2 <

duration min (t0 , t1 )

Optimal vector (u1 , u2 ) (u2 , u0 ) (u1 , u0 )

combinations
Optimal vector (t1 + 0.5t0 , (t2 + 0.5t1 , (t1 + 0.5t2 ,
duration t2 + 0.5t0 ) t0 + 0.5t1 ) t0 + 0.5t2 )

Fig. 5. Distribution of optimal vector in the whole complex vector plane

for the proposed MPC I.

equivalent to prior MPC with duty cycle control but it is much

simpler to implement. Compared with MPC I, apart from the
vector selection, the vector duration has also to be decided. As
current error minimization in (18) can be equivalently achieved
by minimizing the voltage error in (19), the volt–second errors
caused by various vector combinations will be first analyzed.
In the following analysis, the reference voltage vector uref s is
still assumed in the first sector. As uref
s is synthesized by u0 ,
u1 , and u2 in a deadbeat fashion, the candidate vector combi-
nations to be considered are (u1 , u0 ), (u2 , u0 ), and (u1 , u2 ).
Take (u1 , u2 ) as an example, the volt–second error caused by
Fig. 6. Distribution of optimal vector combination in the whole complex
(u1 , u2 ) when they are applied for the whole control period is vector plane for the proposed MPC II.
 
uε12 = u1 t1 + u2 t2 − u1 t1 − u2 t2
= u1 t1 + u2 t2 − u1 (t1 + kt0 ) − u2 (t2 + (1 − k)t0 ) From (28)–(30), it is easy to conclude that the optimal vec-
tor combination is the one having the longest sum of vector
= − t0 (ku1 + u2 (1 − k)) (26) duration. The results can be summarized in Table III. The distri-
 
where t1 = t1 + kt0 and t2 = t2 + (1 − k)t0 are the final du- bution of the optimal voltage vector combination in the whole
ration for u1 and u2 ; k is the fraction factor for the redundant complex vector plane is illustrated in Fig. 6.
duration t0 .
The squared error of uε12 can be calculated as D. Comparison Between the Proposed MPC and
  Deadbeat Control
|uε12 |2 = |u1 |2 t20 1 − k + k 2 . (27)
As shown in Section III-B, after obtaining the reference volt-
From (27), it is easy to obtain that the minimal value of |uε12 |2 age vector from (10), it can be further synthesized by SVM or
is 0.75 |u1 |2 t20 when k = 0.5. In other words, the optimal value CBPWM accurately in theory. This is the so-called deadbeat
of |uε12 | is control with modulator. The proposed MPC methods can only
√ √ minimize rather than eliminate the voltage error. However, the
3 3
|uε12 |opt = |u1 | t0 = |u1 | (Tsc − t1 − t2 ) (28) performance difference between deadbeat control and the pro-
2 2
posed MPC is insignificant, especially in the low speed range,
when the redundant duration of t0 is allocated equally to u1 and as described in [4]. Furthermore, it is possible to include other
u2 . control aims in the cost function for the proposed MPC meth-
In a similar way, the minimal volt–second errors caused by ods, which features great flexibility. This is one of the potential
the vector combinations (u1 , u0 ), (u2 , u0 ) are advantages of the proposed MPC methods and requires further
√ √
3 3 study in the future. As this part is out of scope of this paper, it
|uε10 |opt = |u1 | t2 = |u1 | (Tsc − t1 − t0 ) (29) is not further expanded.
2 2
√ √ In the past, deadbeat control with modulator and the conven-
3 3 tional MPC methods are studied separately and their inherent
|uε20 |opt = |u1 | t1 = |u1 | (Tsc − t2 − t0 ) (30)
2 2 relationship has not been well explained before. One of the main
when the redundant time is equally allocated to the two vectors contributions of this paper is to propose a generalized multiple-
in the vector combination. vector-based MPC, which unifies the conventional MPC I and
9362 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 65, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2018

TABLE IV
MACHINE AND CONTROL PARAMETERS

DC-bus voltage U dc 540 V

Rated power PN 2.4 kW

Rated voltage UN 380 V
Rated frequency fN 100 Hz
Rated torque TN 10 Nm
Number of pole pairs p 4
Stator resistance Rs 2.2479 Ω
d-axis inductance Ls 17.65 mH
q-axis inductance Lr 17.65 mH
Permanent magnet flux ψf 0.4686 Wb
Sampling period Ts 100 μs

II in one frame with much lower complexity and computational

burden by eliminating the enumeration-based predictions. This
is achieved by reconstructing the three-phase duties obtained
from the classical deadbeat control with SVM. Hence, with the
help of deadbeat control with SVM, we can unify the conven-
tional MPC I and II in one frame with lower effort, which also
reveals the inherent relationship between deadbeat control with
SVM and the proposed MPC methods.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

To verify the performance of the proposed MPC, experimen-
tal tests are carried out on a two-level PMSM drive platform.
The results obtained from conventional MPC I [9], [19] (ap-
plying only one voltage vector during one control period) and
MPC II [13] (applying two arbitrary voltage vectors during one
control period) are also presented for the aim of comparison.
The machine and control parameters are listed in Table IV and
the sampling frequencies of each method is 10 kHz. In the test
results, the internal variables are displayed on a digital oscil-
loscope via a on-board DA converter except the stator current,
which is directly measured by a current probe.
First, the steady-state performance of the four MPC methods
are investigated. Figs. 7 and 8 present the steady-state responses
at low and high speeds with rated load for each method. From top
to bottom, the curves shown in Figs. 7 and 8 are rotor speed, elec-
tromagnetic torque, stator flux amplitude, and one-phase stator
current. It is clearly seen that, at both low and high speeds,
the responses of conventional MPC and the proposed MPC I
are very similar. Compared with MPC I, similar steady-state
performance improvement is obtained in conventional MPC II
and the proposed MPC II in terms of torque ripple and current
Fig. 7. Steady-state performance at low speed of 150 r/min with rated
harmonics. The results confirm that the proposed MPC methods load for (a) conventional MPC I, (b) proposed MPC I, (c) conventional
are equivalent to prior MPC methods by presenting very similar MPC II, and (d) proposed MPC II.
performance. It is seen from Figs. 7 and 8 that there are less
current harmonics at low speed than those at high speed. This is
relevant to the characteristics of the machine itself, which has a low speeds than that at high speed, as confirmed by the various
relatively high value of inductance and permanent magnet flux, MPC methods in this paper.
as shown in Table IV. Furthermore, the ratio between control The equivalence between the conventional MPC methods and
frequency to output frequency is high at low speeds, which pro- the proposed MPC methods is further confirmed by the cur-
vides sufficient bandwidth to eliminate the current error caused rent harmonic spectrum shown in Fig. 9 and torque histogram
by control. Hence, better steady-state performance is obtained at shown in Fig. 10. In Fig. 9, the current THD is calculated up to
ZHANG et al.: GENERALIZED MULTIPLE-VECTOR-BASED MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROL FOR PMSM DRIVES 9363

Fig. 9. Harmonics spectrum of one-phase stator current for

(a) conventional and proposed MPC I and (b) conventional and proposed
MPC II.

Fig. 8. Steady-state performance at high speed of 1500 r/min with rated

load for (a) conventional MPC I, (b) proposed MPC I, (c) conventional Fig. 10. Torque histogram at steady-state of rated speed with 150%
MPC II, and (d) proposed MPC II. rated torque for conventional and the proposed MPC methods.

15 kHz harmonics. For conventional MPC I, the current THD trate on the sampling frequency of 10 kHz in conventional and
at 150 r/min and 1500 r/min are 20.78% and 15.55%, which are proposed MPC II, which are similar to the SVM-based methods.
very close to the value of 20.67% and 14.79% in the proposed On the contrary, in conventional and proposed MPC I, the har-
MPC I. The current THD at 150 r/min and 1500 r/min is sig- monics are distributed over a wide frequency range and mainly
nificantly reduced to 3.11% and 7.54% in conventional MPC in the low frequency. The torque histogram at steady-state of
II, which are still close to the value of 3.12% and 7.82% in the rated speed with 150% rated torque for conventional and the
proposed MPC II. It should be noted that the harmonics concen- proposed MPC methods are shown in Fig. 10. It is evident that
9364 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 65, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2018

Fig. 11. Steady-state performance comparison of each method at var- Fig. 12. Average switching frequency of conventional and proposed
ious speeds in terms of current THD, torque ripple, and stator flux ripple. MPC methods at various speeds.

the proposed MPC has similar performance to its counterpart MPC, hence reducing the computational burden significantly.
of conventional MPC with the same number of voltage vec- Another benefit of the two proposed methods is that, as they
tors during one control period. The similar current harmonics are unified in one frame using the same control architecture, the
and torque ripples between conventional MPC methods and the execution time of them are almost identical. On the contrary,
proposed MPC methods confirm their inherent equivalence. in conventional MPC II with two voltage vectors, the execu-
In this paper, the back EMF is estimated from (8), which tion time is significantly increased compared with conventional
assumes that the back EMF is constant over several control MPC I with one voltage vector only.
periods. To evaluate the influence of the averaging in (8), the The average switching frequency of conventional and pro-
power factor at rated speed with rated torque is tested using a posed MPC methods at various speeds are illustrated in Fig. 12.
power analyzer WT1806E from Yokogawa. It is found that, if It is seen that both conventional MPC and the proposed MPC
the back EMF is estimated from (8), the power factors of the presents variable switching frequency in the whole speed range.
proposed MPC I and II are 0.8578 and 0.8784, respectively. On However, for MPC II, the average switching frequency is
the contrary, if the back EMF is directly obtained from the accu- almost constant at low and medium speeds. The main reason
rate machine parameters (namely E = jωr ψ r = jωr ψf ej θ e ), is that when the speed is below 900 r/min, the reference voltage
the power factors of the proposed MPC I and II are 0.8772 vector locates inside the red circle, as shown in Fig. 5, where
and 0.8837, respectively, which are slightly increased. As the the optimal voltage vector combination is a nonzero vector and
sampling frequency is as high as 10 kHz, assuming constant a zero vector. The vector sequence for the low and medium
back EMF over several successive control periods does not bring speeds are the same. As a result, the average switching fre-
serious influence and the power factor is only slightly affected. quency is almost constant in the low and medium speed range.
A comprehensive comparison of steady-state performance for When the speed is above 900 r/min, the reference voltage vec-
each method at various speeds are shown in Fig. 11, including tor locates outside the red circle in Fig. 5. The optimal voltage
current THD, torque ripple, and stator flux ripple. It is seen vector combinations include two different combinations: one
that the performance of MPC II is much better than MPC I at zero vector and one nonzero vector, two nonzero vectors. When
the same sampling frequency. Furthermore, the proposed MPC the speed becomes higher, there is more chance to select two
methods present very similar current THD, torque and flux rip- nonzero vectors. At rated speed of 1500 r/min, the reference
ples to conventional MPC methods at various speeds. The results voltage vector is almost approximately mainly by two nonzero
clearly confirm the equivalence between the conventional MPC vectors. As a result, the minimum average switching frequency
and the proposed MPC. is obtained at rated speed. For MPC I, the lowest switching fre-
Although the proposed MPC methods do not really achieve quency is obtained at low speed of 150 r/min and it reaches the
better steady-state performance than conventional MPC meth- maximum value at speed of 900 r/min. In spite of the switching
ods, they have much lower control complexity and compu- frequency variation, the proposed MPC methods present very
tational burden due to the elimination of enumeration-based similar switching frequencies to conventional MPC methods,
predictions. The proposed MPC and conventional MPC run on because they selects the same voltage vector(s) in principle.
the same hardware of DSP TMS320F28335 and their respec- Apart from the steady-state performance comparison, the dy-
tive execution time is: 54.5 μs for conventional MPC I, 80.4 μs namic response of each method is also investigated, as shown
for conventional MPC II, 45.2 μs for proposed MPC I, 45.5 μs in Fig. 13. The machine first runs at 1500 r/min and then de-
for proposed MPC II. It is clearly seen that the proposed MPC celerates to –1500 r/min to achieve speed reversal operation.
methods have much less execution time than the conventional During the dynamic process, the stator flux is kept constant
ZHANG et al.: GENERALIZED MULTIPLE-VECTOR-BASED MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROL FOR PMSM DRIVES 9365

V. CONCLUSION
This paper proposed a generalized multiple-vector-based
MPC for high-performance control of PMSM drives. Different
from the enumeration-based predictions in conventional MPC,
the proposed method embraces the principle of deadbeat current
control. It is shown that the conventional current error minimiza-
tion can be achieved by minimizing the voltage error between
the applied voltage vectors and the reference voltage vector
obtained from deadbeat current control. After obtaining the ref-
erence voltage vector, the three-phase duties can be easily ob-
tained by injecting appropriate zero sequence component into
CBPWM. The main merit of the proposed MPC is that conven-
tional MPC I and II can be easily obtained by reconstructing the
three-phase duties, hence achieving various MPC methods in
one unified frame with the help of deadbeat control with modu-
lator. As a result, the control complexity and computational bur-
den are significantly reduced compared with the conventional
enumeration-based MPC methods. Furthermore, the inherent
relationship between deadbeat control and the proposed MPC
is revealed. The principle of optimal vector selection and vector
duration determination for the proposed MPC are introduced in
detail using strict mathematical analysis. The experimental re-
sults prove that the proposed MPC I and MPC II are equivalent to
conventional MPC I and II, but executed in a much efficient way.

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