IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 38, NO.

4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

1081

Regenerating-Mode Low-Speed Operation

of Sensorless Induction Motor Drive
With Adaptive Observer
Hisao Kubota, Member, IEEE, Ikuya Sato, Yuichi Tamura, Kouki Matsuse, Fellow, IEEE, Hisayoshi Ohta, and
Yoichi Hori, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractSpeed estimation methods for sensorless induction

motor drives can be divided into two groups. One is based on information about fundamental components of stator currents and
voltages. The other is based on high-frequency components injection in stator voltages or currents. The latter may operate stably
under zero frequency, which occurs in regenerating mode at low
speeds. It, however, causes loss increasing and torque ripple. The
former is difficult to operate under zero frequency. We propose a
stable method categorized in the former group even in regenerating
mode at low speeds. The proposed method is based on an adaptive
flux observer. First, a new observer gain design is shown. Next, a
method avoiding zero-frequency operation with controlling a rotor
flux level is proposed.

server gain is not described clearly, and the gain is chosen at

zero for simplicity in [1]. Therefore, the observer may be unstable under regenerating condition at low speed. An extended
Kalman filter approach can derive a proper observer gain automatically [8]. It, however, needs a lot of calculation. In this
paper, a new observer gain design is shown first. It utilizes the
RouthHurwitz criteria. The proposed algorithm works under
not only powering condition but also regenerating condition,
and does not need a lot of calculation. Next, a method avoiding
zero-frequency operation with controlling a rotor flux level is
proposed.

Index TermsAdaptive observer, induction machine, low speed,

regenerating operation, sensorless drive, zero frequency.

II. DESIGN OF ADAPTIVE OBSERVER GAIN

A. Adaptive Flux Observer [1]

I. INTRODUCTION

HIS PAPER presents a stable sensorless induction motor

(IM) drive method without high-frequency components injection, even under regenerating mode at low speeds.
Speed estimation methods for sensorless IM drives can be
divided into two groups. One is based on fundamental components in stator voltages and currents [1][8]. The other is
based on high-frequency components injection in stator voltages or currents [9][12]. The latter may operate stably under
zero-frequency condition, which occurs in regenerating mode
at low speeds. The high-frequency components injection, however, causes loss increasing and torque ripple. The former is difficult to operate under zero-frequency condition.
We propose a stable method categorized in the former group
in this paper. The proposed method is based on an adaptive flux
observer [1]. The adaptive observer estimates the motor speed
except zero-frequency condition, when the observer gain is designed properly [1]. However, the design procedure of the ob-

An IM is described by the following state equation in the

synchronous rotating reference frame

(1)
where

Paper IPCSD 02006, presented at the 2001 Industry Applications Society

Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, September 30October 5, and approved for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS by the Industrial Drives Committee of the IEEE Industry Applications Society. Manuscript
submitted for review October 15, 2001 and released for publication April 8,
2002.
H. Kubota, Y. Tamura, and K. Matsuse are with Meiji University, Kawasaki
214-8571, Japan (e-mail: kubota@ieee.org; ytamura@kubota.mind.meiji.ac.jp;
matsuse@isc.meiji.ac.jp).
I. Sato is with Fuji Electric Research and Development Company Ltd., Tokyo
191-8502, Japan (e-mail: sato-ikuya@fujielectric.co.jp).
H. Ohta, deceased, was with Aichi Electric Company Ltd., Kasugai, Japan.
Y. Hori is with The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan (e-mail:
hori@hori.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp).
Publisher Item Identifier 10.1109/TIA.2002.800575.
0093-9994/02$17.00 2002 IEEE

stator current,
rotor flux

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 38, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

stator and rotor resistance;

stator and rotor self-inductance;
mutual inductance;
leakage coefficient;
rotor time constant;
stator angular frequency;
motor angular velocity (electric angle).
From (1), the state observer becomes
(2)
where means estimated values.
When the observer poles are assigned in proportion to those
of the induction machine, the observer gain becomes as follows:

Fig. 1.

at k

= 1 0, motor speed = 40 r/min.

:

TABLE I
RATINGS OF TESTED MACHINE

where
and proportional constant (observer
(induction machine poles). When the motor speed
poles)
is not detected, it is estimated by the following adaptive law:
From (4), the characteristic equation is obtained as follows:
(3)
,
.
where
In [1], the proportional constant is chosen as 1.0 for simplicity, which means that the observer gain is zero.

(5)
where

B. Design of Observer Gain

is unWe have found that the adaptive observer with
stable in a small area in regenerating mode at low speeds. Therefore, it is necessary to find out the observer gain which stabilizes
the system under any condition. To investigate the stability, the
adaptive observer is linearized around the operating point as follows:

(4)
where the subscript 0 means the value at the operating point,
variation from the operating point, and

According to the RouthHurwitz criterion, a system is stable if

the following conditions are satisfied.
in its characteristic equation are
1) All the coefficients
positive.
2) Each term of the first column of Routh array is positive.
when the motor speed is 40 r/min for zero
Fig. 1 shows
. When the synchronous speed is beobserver gain
is negative and
tween 025 r/min, regenerating condition,
the RouthHurwitz criterion is not satisfied.
We have investigated thoroughly the criterion for (5) with parameters of the tested machine shown in Table I and have found
does not satisfy the criterion. The
that only the coefficient
coefficient becomes as follows with numerical values of the
parameters:
(6)
From (6), it is clear that can be positive if is chosen properly
. It should be noticed that
is always zero when
except
is zero.
is the quadratic equation of and the coefficient of
is negative when
. With the parameter symbols,
is

KUBOTA et al.: SENSORLESS IM DRIVE WITH ADAPTIVE OBSERVER

1083

(a)
Fig. 2.

with proposed observer gain, motor speed

= 40 r/min.

(b)

!0

Fig. 4. Speed response for step change of load (simulation) (speed reference:
40 r/min, load torque 0
7 N m at 10 s). (a) For conventional method (k =
1:0). (b) For proposed method.

(a)

(b)
Fig. 3. Poles of adaptive observer (! : 8 rad/s constant, 0
(a) k = 1:0: (b) Proposed observer gain.

< ! < 16 rad/s).

Fig. 5. Block diagram of sensorless vector control of IM.

written as shown in (7), at the bottom of the next page. Thereis maximum and positive when the proportional confore,
stant is chosen as follows:
(8)
When the machine, however, operates under powering mode,
with obtained from (8) becomes negative. Therefore, is
forced to be 1.0 in powering mode. Therefore, (8) is adopted in
and
.
the case
when the motor speed is 40 r/min for the
Fig. 2 shows
is not negative. Fig. 3
proposed observer gain. In this case,

shows the dominant poles of (4). When is constant at 1.0, there

are unstable poles. On the other hand, there are no unstable poles
for the proposed method.
Fig. 4 shows simulation results of responses for step change
of load torque. The block diagram of the control system is shown
in Fig. 5. For the simulation, the speed reference is constant
at 40 r/min. Fig. 4(a) is the results for the conventional gain
. Before time 10 s, the load torque was zero and
is positive as shown
the synchronous speed was 40 r/min.
in Fig. 1, so the system operates stably. After time 10 s, the
load torque was changed to 7 N m. Then, synchronous speed
is negative
becomes about 22 r/min. Under this condition,

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 38, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2002

(a)

Fig. 7. Relationship between stator frequency and motor velocity.

(b)

!0

Fig. 6. Speed response for step change of load (experimental) (speed

reference: 40 r/min, load torque 0
7 N m at 16.3 s). (a) For k = 1:0: (b)
For proposed observer gain.

and the dominant pole is located at 0.53, unstable pole. The

actual speed is decreasing gradually.
Fig. 4(b) shows the results for the proposed gain. In this case,
the dominant poles are 0.68 3.15j, stable ones, and the actual speed is kept constant at the reference.
Fig. 6 shows experimental results of adaptive-observer-based
sensorless IM drives. The adaptive observer and the vector controller are implemented on a 266-MHz Pentium II Processor
PC. The speed command was constant at 40 r/min. Load torque
was changed at 16.3 s from 0 to 7 N m which was generative
torque. When was 1.0, the system could not keep the speed
constant. On the other hand, the system with the proposed observer gain operated stably. The proportional constant varies
with the operating condition as shown in Fig. 6(b).

Fig. 8. Flowchart of flux reference calculation.

III. OPERATION AROUND ZERO FREQUENCY

When the stator angular frequency is zero, it is difficult to
estimate the motor speed. It is understood from (6). is always
, so the RouthHurwitz criterion is not satisfied.
zero for
The stator frequency may become zero with generative torque
at low speeds.
In this paper, a method to avoid zero-frequency operation is
proposed. Fig. 7 shows the relationship between the stator anwhen the
gular frequency and the motor angular velocity
load torque is constant. When the induction machine operates
with generative torque at the point (A), the operating point is
moved to (B) with flux-weakening control. Between points (B)
and (C), the flux level is controlled to keep the stator frequency

(7)

KUBOTA et al.: SENSORLESS IM DRIVE WITH ADAPTIVE OBSERVER

1085

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

!0

Fig. 9. Speed ramp response (simulation) (speed reference: 120

30 r/min, load torque
speed. (b) Synchronous speed. (c) Rotor flux reference. (d) Stator current.

constant. In this area, the flux level is determined by the following equation:

024 N1m constant). (a) Reference speed, actual speed, and estimated

From (11), the rotor flux reference is

(12)

(9)
The slip angular frequency command at the point (B),
changed with the torque command as follows:

where
;
pole pairs;
torque command;

, is

(13)

minimum rotor flux level (in this paper, is set at

);
rated rotor flux level.
Equation (9) is derived as follows.
The slip angular frequency command, , is proportional to
the torque and is inversely proportional to the square of the rotor
flux level
(10)
The stator angular frequency is constant at
between points (B) and (C) in Fig. 7

Substituting (13) into (12), (9) is obtained.

Fig. 8 shows the flowchart for calculation of the rotor flux
reference. Fig. 9 shows simulation results of a speed ramp response. The load torque was constant at 24 N m. The reference speed decreased slowly in ramp shape. If the flux level is
kept constant, the stator frequency and the synchronous speed
must be zero around a speed reference of 60 r/min. In the case
of the proposed method, the synchronous speed jumped from
about 20 to 20 r/min. Therefore, the drive system is able to
operate stably.
IV. CONCLUSION

(11)

We have proposed a stable sensorless IM drive, even in the

regenerating mode at low speeds. With the proposed method, it
is not necessary to inject higher frequency components, so the
machine efficiency does not deteriorate and torque ripple is not
produced.

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REFERENCES
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[7] J. Maes and J. Melkebeek, Speed sensorless direct torque control of
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[8] Y. R. Kim, S. K. Sul, and M. H. Park, Speed sensorless vector control
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orientation at zero flux frequency, in Conf. Rec. 1996 IEEE-IAS Annu.
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Hisao Kubota (M87) received the B.E., M.E., and

Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Meiji
University, Kawasaki, Japan, in 1982, 1984, and
1989, respectively.
Since 1984, he has been a member of the faculty at
Meiji University, where he is currently a Professor.
His research interests are in motor drives.
Dr. Kubota is a member of the Institute of
Electrical Engineers of Japan and the IEEE Industry
Applications, IEEE Industrial Electronics, and IEEE
Power Electronics Societies.

Ikuya Sato received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in

electrical and electronic engineering from Meiji University, Kawasaki, Japan, in 1999 and 2001, respectively.
Since 2001, he has been with Fuji Electric
Research and Development Company Ltd., Tokyo,
Japan. His research interests are static converters
and motor drives.
Mr. Sato is a member of the Institute of Electrical
Engineers of Japan.

Yuichi Tamura received the B.S. degree in electrical

and electronic engineering in 2000 from Meiji
University, Kawasaki, Japan, where he is currently
working toward the M.S. degree.
His research interests are in motor drives.
Mr. Tamura is a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.

Kouki Matsuse (SM88F96) received the B.E.,

M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1966, 1968,
and 1971, respectively.
In 1971, he joined the faculty of Meiji University
as a Lecturer of Electrical Engineering. Since 1979,
he has been a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and, since 1996, he has served as
the Dean of the School of Science and Technology. In
1980, he was a Visiting Professor of Electrical Engineering at Iowa State University of Science and Technology, Ames, for five months. He was invited to be a Guest Professor in the
Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, China, in 1998. In
1987, he was an International Consultant to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. He has authored 48 published IEEE TRANSACTIONS papers, 87 refereed full-conference papers, and is the holder of three U.S. patents.
He is the coauthor of four books and coeditor of Sensorless Control of AC Motor
Drives (Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 1996). His research interest are power electronics, microprocessor-based controllers for static power converters and drives,
adjustable-speed ac drives, and ac machines. He was the Society Vice President (19921994), the Society President (1996), and the Chairperson of the
Editorial Board (19901993) of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan
Industry Applications Society (IEEJ IAS). He served as the Chairperson of the
Management Committee of the IEEJ 1995 International Power Electronics Conference (IPEC-Yokohama95). He served as the Organizing Committee Chairperson of IPEC-Tokyo 2000. He serves as the Chairperson of the Japanese National Committee of IEC-TC22 (Power Electronic Systems and Equipment),
and as a member of the Japanese National Committee of IEC-SC22E and IECSC22F.
Dr. Matsuse was a Member-at-Large of the IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS) Executive Board for 1998 and 1999. He is a member of the IAS Industrial Drives, Industrial Power Converter, and Power Electronics Devices and
Components Committees. He served as the Chairperson of the Tokyo Chapter
of the IAS for 1999. He received the Outstanding Paper Award in 1992 from the
IEEJ. He received the IAS Outstanding Achievement Award in 2000.

Hisayoshi Ohta received the B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from Meiji University, Kawasaki,
Japan, in 1972.
He was with Aichi Electric Company, Ltd.,
Kasugai, Japan, where he developed motor drive
theory and electrical instruments such as the no-contact power supply. He headed the Development
Department until the time of his death in October
2001.
Mr. Ohta was a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.

Yoichi Hori (S81M83SM00) received the B.S.,

M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in
1978, 1980, and 1983, respectively.
In 1983, he joined the Department of Electrical
Engineering, The University of Tokyo, as a Research
Associate. He later became an Assistant Professor,
an Associate Professor, and, in 2000, a Professor.
During 19911992, he was a Visiting Researcher at
the University of California, Berkeley. His research
fields are control theory and its industrial application
to motion control, mechatronics, robotics, electric vehicles, etc.
Prof. Hori has been the Treasurer of the IEEE Japan Council and Tokyo Section since 2001. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan,
Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, Robotic Society of Japan, and Society of Automotive Engineers of
Japan.