Improved Model-Free Predictive Current Control for Synchronous Reluctance Motor Drives

An improved model-free predictive current control (IMFPCC) method for synchronous reluctance motor (SynRM) drives is presented in this paper. The main advantages of previous MFPCC are that it does not require specific SynRM models and it requires neither motor parameters nor back-EMF estimations. However, this approach has two disadvantages: 1) two current measurements are required in each sampling period, which may lead to the detection of undesirable current spikes caused by instantaneous switching inside the inverter, and 2) an unresolved problem of stagnant current-variation updates, which undermines the prediction performance. This paper intends to eliminate these two drawbacks while retaining all the merits of MFPCC. The proposed IMFPCC is simple and easy to realize. Furthermore, no pulsewidth modulation (PWM) technique is required. A 32-bit microprocessor, TMS320F2809, is utilized to implement both the proposed IMFPCC and the model-based predictive current control (MBPCC) for a performance comparison. Experiment results are provided to validate the proposed method and verify its feasibility.