IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO.
1, JANUARY 1997
Long-Range Predictive Control of Current Regulated PWM for Induction
Motor Drives Using the Synchronous Reference Frame
L. Zhang, R. Norman, and W. Shepherd
Abstract— This paper presents the application of long-range
predictive control to the problem of induction motor stator
current regulation. The particular controller used is the general-
ized predictive controller in a synchronous reference frame. The
theory and implementation of this controller are discussed and
simulation results are presented which compare favorably with
those for proportional integral compensated controllers.
Index Terms— Generalized predictive control, current regu-
lated PWM, voltage source inverter, induction machine drive.
NOMENCLATURE
Supply frequency rad/s.
V Stator voltage vector in the stationary reference
frame.
V Stator voltage vector in the synchronous reference
frame.
I Stator current vector in the stationary reference
frame.
I Stator current vector in the synchronous reference
frame.
R Stator resistance.
L Stator leakage inductance.
L Rotor leakage inductance referred to primary turns.
L Mutual magnetizing inductance.
L Total leakage inductance.
E Machine back EMF vector in the stationary refer-
ence frame.
E Machine back EMF vector in the synchronous
reference frame.
K Proportional gain factor of the PI controller.
K Integral factor of the PI controller.
K Equivalent gain factor of a voltage source inverter.
I. INTRODUCTION
A N induction motor vector control scheme decouples the
stator input current into flux- and torque-producing com-
ponents corresponding to those of a dc motor. The generated
motor torque is proportional to the product of the two compo-
nents. When implementing the vector control scheme the stator
currents are commonly controlled using a current-regulated
pulse width modulator inverter (CRPWM). Although generally
sensitive and robust this does not, however, guarantee that the
stator current level is completely aligned with the value desired
for fast transient response and zero steady-state error. An exact
Manuscript received December 19, 1994. Recommended by Associate
Editor, J. Smith.
The authors are with the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineer-
ing, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP U.K.
Publisher Item Identifier S 1063-6536(97)00245-5.
1063–6536/97$10.00  1997 IEEE
119
knowledge of the rotor parameters is vital to the performance
of the vector controller, as is accurate control of the stator
current.
There are two main types of CRPWM inverters, the hys-
teresis regulator and the sine-triangle comparison controller
[1]–[3]. A hysteresis current controller gives a near-sinusoidal
motor current with small ripple but requires a high and
nonconstant switching frequency in the inverter. A sine-
triangle controller uses a natural sampled PWM scheme, in-
corporated with a proportional integral (PI) current controller,
where the parameters are adjusted to minimize the magnitude
and the phase errors in the ac currents [2]–[4]. With fixed
switching frequency and linear characteristics, a PI controller
generates less acoustic noise and inverter switching loss than
its hysteresis counter-part. However, a sinusoidally varying
steady-state error is always present in the stator current [4]–[6]
of magnitude dependent on the machine operating frequency.
Various approaches to solving the current regulation prob-
lem have been reported, most of which have attributed the
problem to a loss of either gain or bandwidth [7]–[10]. Only
Schauder has recognized that the problem stems from the
inherent structure of the controller [5]. Rowan and Kerkman
suggested the design of a PI-sine-triangular comparison reg-
ulator in the synchronous rotating reference frame, where the
input and output are dc quantities [6] rather than the stationary
reference frame. A synchronous PI controller relies on the
accurate tuning of the proportional gain and the integration
time, which is difficult because of changes in the operating
point and variations in the machine parameters.
Among various forms of predictive controller, the gener-
alized predictive controller (GPC) is particularly robust due
to its use of model structure [11]–[13]. This paper presents a
PWM current regulator using a generalized predictive control
scheme is developed in a synchronously rotating reference
frame. The controller predicts the stator current over several
sample intervals, namely long range. The control output, to
generate the natural sampled PWM waveform, is calculated
by minimizing the sum of the squares of the stator current
errors. It will be shown that this scheme outperforms any of the
existing current control methods. It provides high-performance
transient regulation, zero steady-state error, and the control
parameters are easily tuned.
The present paper analyzes the problems of PI-based
CRPWM in both synchronous and stationary reference frames.
It then presents the theory and implementation details of
the GPC method as applied to the stator current control
problem. The results of simulation tests on a transient model
of the induction motor stator are compared with those for
synchronous and stationary PI regulators.
120 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 1, JANUARY 1997
(a)
(b)
Fig. 1. Transient model of a three-phase induction motor for stator current
controller design.
II. THE INDUCTION MOTOR MODEL
An induction motor supplied through a voltage source
inverter has an input signal that is nonsinusoidal. This can be
decomposed to a set of sine waves of different frequencies
by Fourier analysis and for each there is a corresponding
equivalent circuit. Motor current response via superposition
is complex so a simplified approach is usually adapted, under
the following assumptions [1], [15]:
1) The total leakage inductance per phase can be repre-
sented as L , where
and are stator and rotor leakage inductances and
is the mutual leakage inductance.
2) The harmonic slip is unity, hence for harmonic currents
the motor behaves as a leakage inductance.
3) The fundamental current loop under normal conditions,
with a slip close to zero, is presented with a back EMF
approximated as where
rotor flux and is the angular frequency of
the ac supply. The simplified motor dynamic model is
shown in Fig. 1.
4) Machine speed is assumed to be constant because the
circuit time response constant is very much shorter than
that of the mechanical system.
The axis voltage matrix in a stationary reference frame
may be written
(1)
where the superscript denotes that the axes are
stationary and denotes the differential operator . Terms
represent supply voltage vectors and I and I are stator
current vectors in the stationary reference frame. Its equivalent
in a synchronous reference frame is
(2)
In (2) the superscript is used for the synchronous reference
frame. Note that (2) represents an interactive two-input/two-
output system, whereas the input and output in (1) are com-
pletely decoupled and the system can therefore be represented
by two independent processes. Furthermore, the variables in
(2) are all dc quantities, whereas those in (1) are sinusoidal
variables. This leads to a difference in the controller structure
that is discussed in Section III below. To transform quantities
in the stationary reference frame to those in a synchronous
reference frame, a transformation matrix
(3)
may be used, where , the stator angular position, equals
.
For example, the measured voltages and currents from an
induction motor drive are ac variables in a stationary reference
frame. Using T , from (3), their synchronous equivalents
can be derived as
(4)
III. STATOR CURRENT REGULATOR USING A PI CONTROLLER
The objective of the stator current controller is to ensure
that the measured stator currents track the required values
accurately and with as short a transient interval as possible.
This is hard to achieve because:
1) the stator circuit is nonlinear due to speed-dependent
back EMF’s in the stator windings;
2) the controlled variables are three-phase ac quantities, re-
quiring controller parameters suitable for both amplitude
and phase angle regulation;
3) the PWM voltage source inverter introduces dead times
into the system which result in waveform distortion in
the power stage.
In a PI type current control loop in a stationary reference
frame, the three-phase sinusoidal stator currents are compared
with the reference currents generated by the speed/torque
control loop and the errors are used by three identical PI
controllers. The controller outputs are then compared with a
fixed-frequency triangular carrier wave. The resulting PWM
signals, whose duty cycle is proportional to the control output,
control the inverter switching. If the coordinate is used,
the three-phase variables are converted into axis forms
and two identical controllers are used. The control
outputs are converted back to their three-phase equivalent
before proceeding to the PWM waveform generation process,
as shown in Fig. 2. If the controller parameters are chosen
adequately, this control scheme provides good quality control
during transient periods. The main problem is that, in the
steady state, there is always a phase error between the stator
phase currents and the reference values. Moreover, the size of
this error varies with the machine operating frequency. The
cause of this lies in the structure of the controller and is
analyzed below.
Consider the transfer function of a PI controller
(5)
where K is the proportional gain factor and K the integration
gain factor.
IEEE TRANSCATIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 1, JANUARY 1997
Fig. 2. Closed-loop stator current control system in the stationary reference frame.
As back EMF is assumed constant, the stator circuit transfer
function for either I or I may be written
(6)
where represents the net circuit gain and T is . The
corresponding closed-loop transfer function is given by
(7)
In (7), K represents the gain factor caused by the PWM
inverter, K equals the product of K and A, and the current
outputs can be expressed as
(8)
It is known that the objective of the current controller is
to drive I (S) as close as possible to I (S) until they are
equal in the steady state at all operating frequencies, when the
magnitude and phase-angle of the closed-loop transfer function
are
(9)
In the steady state, the modulating (drive) frequency needs
to be in the range 0 2 100. It can be seen from (7) that
the conditions of (9) can only be achieved when equals
zero. For any other values, both the amplitude and phase
angle of are different. The parameters of the controller
should, therefore, be tuned to meet the conditions defined
in (9) as closely as possible, but they cannot completely
satisfy them. This, in turn, means that the controller has to be
retuned when changes to avoid steady-state performance
degradation. Consequently, an unlimited number of regulators
with different characteristics are required. Clearly, this is
unrealistic to achieve and hence the PI control scheme in the
stationary reference frame is not ideal for high-performance
machine drives.
To overcome the problem of controlling ac quantities, a
synchronous PI regulator is defined which takes the same
121
form as that given by (5) but operates on the stator circuit
model in a synchronous reference frame given by (2). The
input and output variables are all dc quantities in the steady
state. The diagonal elements of the model (2) are identical
first order processes but the plant should be viewed as a
multiple-input/multiple-output system. For a fixed value of
the eigenvalues of this second-order system lie at /L
j and at high values of the inherent damping becomes
very low, with possible stability problems. For low and
medium values of , the synchronous PI controller is likely
to give stable closed-loop responses for currents I and I . It
also eliminates completely the steady-state error. Nevertheless,
the two nonzero off-diagonal elements, reactances and
will inevitably affect the performance of the transient
response and hence the parameters of the controller must be
carefully chosen to minimize the effect of interaction.
The synchronous controller can also be implemented in
a stationary reference frame. This involves transforming the
controller (5) to a stationary reference frame, yielding the
controller outputs V expressed by
(10)
The two-input/two-output control loop is shown in Fig. 3.
The controller consists of two parts, the conventional PI
regulator and the cross-coupled control states .
In transient periods the PI part dominates the control action in
order to force the current error to zero. When the steady state
is reached, the current errors are zero and the cross-coupling
states provide sinusoidal voltage output to the machine at the
operating frequency. Hence this controller effectively solves
the problem of nonzero steady-state error under ac operating
conditions. Nevertheless, the transient performance is gener-
ally worse than that of the stationary regulator, indicated by
the cross-coupling states.
IV. LONG-RANGE PREDICTIVE
CONTROL OF STATOR CURRENT
A. System Equations
Predictive control is a type of control scheme which, given
a model of the system and a knowledge of past inputs
122 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 1, JANUARY 1997

Fig. 3. Closed-loop stator current control system using the synchronous reference frame controller.

Fig. 4. Closed-loop stator current control system using the GPC controller.

and outputs, allows the future outputs to be expressed in where ,

terms of future inputs. The long-range prediction forecasts , and represents disturbance.
several sample steps ahead and the most suitable control Assuming that at arbitrary time the values of the stator
signal is derived at each step by minimizing a quadratic cost voltages V and V are defined, these will be kept
function. Various types of predictive control algorithm have constant for future sample steps. The GPC predicts these
been proposed in the past decade and of these the GPC is steps ahead to give and as
potentially the most capable of providing good performance
and robust control. Fig. 4 shows the stator current regulation
system using the GPC. The inverter supplies the induction
motor, the stator currents of which are sampled, fed back
..
through a three-phase-to-two-axis conversion, and transferred .
to the synchronously rotating reference frame for comparison
with the reference currents to generate the input to the GPC.
Control signals from the GPC are transformed back from the
synchronously rotating reference frame to the stationary frame (12)
by the inverse transformation matrix T and then changed
from two-axis to the equivalent three-phase quantities. These where
three-phase values are then compared with a high-frequency
triangular carrier wave in order to generate triggering signals
for the inverter.
To consider the design of the GPC controller for the
induction motor drive, the dynamic model in a synchronous If the GPC operates in incremental form, the relationships
reference frame given by (2) is used. Using the Z-Transform in (12) become
method the discrete-time version of this model is

..
.
(11) (13)
IEEE TRANSCATIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 1, JANUARY 1997 123

Note that are given by and . Therefore we have

where

.. (19)
.
Note that both g and are not just the step response
sequences of the model. The last two terms on the right-hand
side of (18) and (19) are due to the cross-coupling terms of
the model. This is different from the situation when the model
(14) consists of two independent processes with no interaction
where between them. In such cases the terms are zero and the
terms are samples of the model step response. The first
element of equals zero because cross-coupling does
not occur until the second sample instant.
Rewriting (16) by separating and terms and using the
matrix form, gives the final form of the predictors as
Note that terms in
(14) are all zero, as the future controls and back EMF are ..
defined to be constant. Rearranging the above equations so that . ..
.
the predicted terms and
..
are expressed by two parts; the past states of the .
system and the part related to the future controls and ..
, the currents at time and at sample steps in the .. .
future are predicted using .

.. ..
. .
(20)
..
.
(15)

Terms and in (15) account for the past states The GPC defines a quadratic cost function of the form
of the system. They are both initially zero because the system
starts from the steady state and the incremental form is used
so that
(21)
(16) where is the finite number of output prediction sample steps,
term represents the future reference currents, is an
(17) identity matrix, and represents a constant weighting factor.
Note that is equivalent to when the back EMF’s
In (16) and (17) C equals . In (15), terms are constant. Minimizing this cost function of the future current
form a parameter vector whose elements are derived errors and control voltage increments gives a relationship for
from the step response of the model and the cross-coupling calculating the next voltage inputs
term . Hence

where .. ..
. .

.. ..
Similarly, terms in (15) gives vector . .
of order whose parameters are obtained from combining
124 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 1, JANUARY 1997

(a)

(b)

(c)
Fig. 5. Responses of phase A stator current when command current changes. (a) Stationary reference frame PI controller. (b) Synchronous reference
frame PI controller. (c) GPC controller.
IEEE TRANSCATIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 1, JANUARY 1997 125

Fig. 5 shows the phase A stator current responses to the

.. command current change when different controllers were
.
used. In Fig. 5(a) a phase error between the reference and
(22) the measured currents is clearly present and this cannot be
.. eliminated by controller gain adjustment. The single phase
. current response using the synchronous PI regulator is shown
in Fig. 5(b). The phase error is cancelled but the poor quality
where of the transient control, indicated by the cross-coupling terms,
is clearly visible when changing the command current. The
superior performance of the GPC regulator is illustrated in
Fig. 5(c) which shows that there is a zero phase shift between
The new control voltages from the GPC are therefore the stator currents and their respective reference signal. Also,
the quality of the command current following during transient
state is good. Relative transient performances of the two
(23) controllers are the subject of an ongoing investigation, to
be reported later. Preliminary results indicate that with the
B. Control Algorithm GPC controller the transient response is significantly improved
The control algorithm is implemented in the following way. compared with the PI controller.
Step 1) Choose the prediction length N and compute
G(z and S(z based on the discrete-time VI. CONCLUSION
model of the stator circuit.
Step 2) Calculate the 2 2 matrix (M M + I) . The application of GPC to the problem of stator current
Step 3) At , calculate (1) and (1) using (15) by regulation for high-performance control systems has been
assuming that both and are set to presented. Results prove superior to those of the conventional
zero. current regulation method of PI control, in terms of the
Step 4) Take the results of Step 3 as the measured currents removal of phase and magnitude errors which degrade the
and calculate predictions of I and I where transient performance of motor control systems. The GPC
, iteratively. method is also superior to that of the synchronous PI regulator
Step 5) Calculate the next voltage increments V (t) and which, although accurate in the steady state, has a poor
V (t) using the reference currents I and I , the dynamic performance.
result from Steps 2 and 3 and (22).
Step 6) Calculate the new voltage outputs using (23). APPENDIX
Step 7) Convert the voltage output from Step 6 to a three-
phase signal and generate the PWM output to r stator resistance, 0.6 ;
control the inverter. r rotor resistance referred to primary turns, 0.4 ;
Step 8) Return to Step 3 for the next voltage output cal- L stator leakage inductance, 0.0021H;
culation. L rotor leakage inductance referred to primary turns,
0.0021H;
V. SIMULATION RESULTS L magnetizing inductance, 0.059H.

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