Dead-Time Correction Applied for Extended Flux-Based Sensorless Control of Assisted PMSMs in Electric Vehicles

Sensorless control technology of PMSMs is of great importance for safety and reliability in electric vehicles. Among all existing methods, only the extended flux-based method has great performance over all speed range. However, the accuracy and reliability of the extended flux rotor position observer are greatly affected by the dead-time effect. In this paper, the extended flux-based observer is adopted to develop a sensorless control system. The influence of dead-time effect on the observer is analyzed and a dead-time correction method is specially designed to guarantee the reliability of the whole control system. A comparison of estimation precision among the extended flux-based method, the electromotive force (EMF)-based method and the high frequency signal injection method is given by simulations. The performance of the proposed sensorless control system is verified by experiments. The experimental results show that the proposed extended flux-based sensorless control system with dead-time correction has satisfactory performance over full speed range in both loaded and non-loaded situations. The estimation error of rotor speed is within 4% in all working conditions. The dead-time correction method improves the reliability of the control system effectively.