Towards an industrially implementable PWM-injection scheme

1. A variable speed drive for the closed loop control of the operation of an AC electric motor based on a given control law, the variable speed drive comprising:

an output terminal for delivering a controlled alternating drive voltage to the controlled AC electric motor;

a solid-state power inverter including solid-state switches for generating the drive voltage by commutating the solid-state switches to invert a provided DC voltage;

a drive controller for controlling the generation of the drive voltage by the power inverter; and

a drive current sensing device for measuring the instantaneous intensity of the drive current taken up by the controlled AC electric motor, and for providing the resulting measurements as a drive current intensity signal to the drive controller, wherein the drive controller includes:

a pulse-width modulation generator;

a control law module storing the given control law; and

a state variable estimation module for estimating the instantaneous value of at least one state variable of the controlled AC electric motor,

wherein the control law module is adapted to, based on the stored control law and state variable estimates provided by the estimation module, compute a target voltage signal and output the computed target voltage signal to the pulse-width modulation generator,

wherein the pulse-width modulation generator is adapted to:

approximate the received target voltage signal with a pulse-width modulated inverter control signal;

control the operation of the power inverter using the inverter control signal, thereby obtaining the drive voltage;

compute, based on the deviation between the inverter control signal and the target voltage signal, a state variable estimation support signal;

extract, from the inverter control signal, a time sequence of the next commutations of the power inverter's solid-state switches; and

output the computed state variable estimation support signal and the extracted commutation time sequence to the state variable estimation module, and wherein the state variable estimation module is adapted to:

estimate the instantaneous value of a state variable of the AC electric motor based on the received state variable estimation support signal and the drive current intensity signal provided by the drive current sensing device wherein those time segments of the drive current intensity signal, which, according to the received commutation time sequence, correspond to the commutation of one of the power inverter's solid-state switches, are discarded in the state variable estimation as corrupted time segments; and

output the resulting state variable estimate to the control law module.

2. The variable speed drive of claim 1 , wherein the state variable estimation module is adapted to use a sequence of temporal masking windows, which follows the commutation time sequence, to determine those time segments of the drive current intensity signal which are discarded.

3. The variable speed drive of claim 2 , wherein the full width at maximum, FWM, of the temporal masking windows is greater than or equal to the switching time of the power inverter's solid-state switches.

4. The variable speed drive of claim 2 , wherein the temporal masking windows have a discontinuous shape, such as a rectangular shape.

5. The variable speed drive of claim 2 , wherein the temporal masking windows have a continuous shape, such as a trapezoidal shape.

6. The variable speed drive of claim 1 , further comprising a 1-bit delta-sigma modulator adapted to:

receive the drive current intensity signal in analog form from the drive current sensing device;

convert the received analog drive current intensity signal into a binary bitstream; and

output the binary bitstream to the drive controller.

7. The variable speed drive of claim 6 , wherein the delta-sigma modulator is a second-order continuous-time delta-sigma modulator.

8. The variable speed drive of claim 1 , further comprising a multi-bit analog-to-digital converter adapted to:

receive the drive current intensity signal in analog form from the drive current sensing device;

convert the received analog drive current intensity signal into a digital drive current intensity signal; and

output the digital drive current intensity signal to the drive controller.

9. The variable speed drive of claim 1 , wherein the variable speed drive is a three-phase variable speed drive, and thus the controlled alternating drive voltage is a three-phase voltage, the power inverter is a three-phase inverter, and the drive current intensity signal is a three-phase current signal.

10. The variable speed drive of claim 9 , further comprising:

a 1-bit delta-sigma modulator adapted to:

receive the drive current intensity signal in analog form from the drive current sensing device,

convert the received analog drive current intensity signal into a binary bitstream, and

output the binary bitstream to the drive controller, and

three 1-bit delta-sigma modulators, one for each phase of the drive current intensity signal.

11. The variable speed drive of claim 9 , further comprising:

a multi-bit analog-to-digital converter adapted to:

receive the drive current intensity signal in analog form from the drive current sensing device,

convert the received analog drive current intensity signal into a digital drive current intensity signal, and

output the digital drive current intensity signal to the drive controller; and

three multi-bit analog-to-digital converters, one for each phase of the drive current intensity signal.

12. An electric drive assembly comprising a synchronous reluctance motor and a variable speed drive of claim 1 for controlling the synchronous reluctance motor.

13. An electric drive assembly comprising a permanent-magnet synchronous motor and a variable speed drive of claim 1 for controlling the permanent-magnet synchronous motor.

14. A method of controlling, in a closed loop, the operation of an AC electric motor based on a given control law, the method comprising:

a) measuring the instantaneous intensity of the drive current taken up by the controlled AC electric motor;

b) estimating the instantaneous value of a state variable of the AC electric motor using the measured drive current intensity;

c) computing, based on the given control law and the estimated state variable, a target voltage signal;

d) approximating the computed target voltage signal with a pulse-width modulated inverter control signal;

e) computing, based on the deviation between the inverter control signal and the target voltage signal, a state variable estimation support signal;

f) generating a controlled alternating drive voltage by inverting a provided DC voltage through the commutation of solid-state switches in accordance with the inverter control signal; and

g) delivering the generated drive voltage to the controlled AC electric motor; wherein the state variable estimation according to step b):

relies on the state variable estimation support signal computed in step e) as an additional input together with the drive current intensity measured in step a); and

is suspended during each commutation of one of the solid-state switches.