IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 13, NO.

5, SEPTEMBER 1998 969

New Integration Algorithms for Estimating

Motor Flux over a Wide Speed Range
Jun Hu and Bin Wu, Member, IEEE

Abstract Three new integration algorithms for motor flux

estimation are proposed in this paper. These algorithms are
developed for use in high-performance sensorless ac motor drives.
The first algorithm is used to elaborate the basic operating
principle. The second one is designed for the drives that require
a constant air-gap flux during operation. The third algorithm, in
which an adaptive controller is used, can have wide industrial
applications. The proposed algorithms can effectively solve the
problems associated with pure integrators. These algorithms
can be used to accurately measure the motor flux including its
magnitude and phase angle over a wide speed range (1 : 100).
The performance of the algorithms is investigated, compared,
and verified experimentally.
Index Terms Adaptive control, flux estimation, integrator,
sensorless drive.
I. INTRODUCTION
F LUX ESTIMATION is an important task in implementing
high-performance motor drives [1][6]. There are, in
general, two methods for flux estimation: one is based on
measured motor currents, and the other is based on measured
voltages [1], [2], [5]. In the current-based method, the motor
air-gap flux is identified by solving a set of equations in which
motor parameters are required as well as measured motor
currents, speed, or position [1]. One of the problems associated
with this method is that the parameters change with motor
operating conditions, e.g., variations in rotor temperature and
magnetic saturation level. In order to overcome this problem,
an on-line motor parameter identification scheme should be
implemented, which increases the complexity of the drive
system. Furthermore, the motor speed or position has to be
detected, an undesirable practice in most industrial applications
since the use of tachometer will deteriorate the reliability
of the drive. In the voltage-based method, the motor flux
can be obtained by integrating its back electromotive force
(emf). The only motor parameter required is the stator winding
resistance, which can be easily obtained and in most cases
can be considered constant. Taking into account the fact that
the motor speed signal is not required, this method is much
preferred [3], [4].
Manuscript received June 3, 1997; revised February 24, 1998. This work
was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
of Canada and Rockwell Automation-Allen Bradley, Inc. Recommended by
Associate Editor, D. Torrey.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2K3, Canada
(e-mail: jhu@ee.ryerson.ca; bwu@ee.ryerson.ca).
Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8993(98)06489-8.
08858993/98$10.00 1998 IEEE
Fig. 1. Algorithm 1: modified integrator with a saturable feedback.
However, implementation of an integrator for motor flux
estimation is no easy task. A pure integrator has dc drift and
initial value problems [3], [5]. A dc component in measured
motor back emf is inevitable in practice. This dc component,
no matter how small it is, can finally drive the pure integrator
into saturation. The initial value problem associated with
the pure integrator can be explained as follows. When a
sine signal is applied to the integrator, a cosine wave is
expected at its output. This is true only when the input sine
wave is applied at its positive or negative peak. Otherwise,
a constant dc offset will appear at the output. This offset,
representing a constant dc flux in a motor, does not exist
during motor normal operation. The dc offset can also be
generated when there is a rapid change in the input signal.
A common solution to these problems is to replace the pure
integrator with a first-order low-pass (LP) filter. Obviously,
the LP filter will produce errors in magnitude and phase angle,
especially when the motor runs at a frequency lower than the
filter cutoff frequency. Therefore, motor drives using LP filters
as a flux estimator usually have a limited speed range, typically
1 : 10 (660 Hz) [1]. In this paper, three modified integrators
using proposed algorithms are developed to solve the above
mentioned problems. The performance of these integrators is
studied and verified through simulation and experiment.
II. NEW INTEGRATION ALGORITHMS
As discussed in the previous section, both pure integrator
and LP filter have application problems when they are used for
motor flux estimation. To solve these problems, three modified
integrators are proposed. The output of these integrators can
be generally expressed as
(1)
where is the input of the integrator and is a compensation
signal. Assuming that the compensation signal is set to zero,
970
Fig. 2. Algorithm 2: modified integrator with an amplitude limiter.
Fig. 3. Algorithm 3: modified integrator with an adaptive compensation.
the modified integrator essentially serves as a first-order LP
filter which is usually adopted to replace the pure integrator in
practice. If, on the other hand, the compensation is taken from
the integrators output (i.e., ), the modified integrator
performs the same function as a pure integrator [ ].
It can be seen from the above analysis that with a properly
designed compensation, the modified integrator may achieve
a better performance than the LP filter while the problems
associated with the pure integrator may be avoided. The
detailed discussions on the modified integrators are as follows.
A. Algorithm 1: Modified Integrator with
a Saturable Feedback
The block diagram of a modified integrator with a saturable
feedback is shown in Fig. 1. The output of the integrator is
composed of two components: a feedforward component
and feedback component . If the frequency of the input
signal is much higher than the cutoff frequency of the
modified integrator, the gain of the feedback block is close
to zero. As a result, the feedback component is trivial
and the integrator output is essentially composed of the
feedforward component only. At low frequencies, however,
the functional blocks in the feedback loop play an important
role in eliminating dc drift or saturation. Assuming that the
limiting level in the saturation block is not exceeded, the
compensation signal is equal to the integrator output , and
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 13, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 1998
a pure integrator function is obtained. If the limiting level is
reached, the integrator output becomes
(2)
where is the output of the saturation block, whose
amplitude is limited to . It is interesting to note that the
level of nonlinear distortion produced by the saturation block
can be reduced at the output of the feedback block since this
block is essentially an LP filter. Now, let us assume that a
pure dc signal is applied to the input. The maximum output
of the integrator is
(3)
which implies that the modified integrator will not be driven
into saturation provided that the limiting level is properly
set.
The main difficulty associated with this algorithm is to
determine the limiting level . In order to eliminate dc
component at the output, the limiting level should be set at
a value equal to the actual flux amplitude. When the limiting
level is greater than the flux amplitude, the flux waveform
may be shifted up or down due to the dc bias at the input
until its amplitude reaches either positive or negative limiting
level. Hence, the output waveform is composed of an ac flux
signal and a dc offset. The larger the difference between the
HU AND WU: NEW INTEGRATION ALGORITHMS FOR ESTIMATING MOTOR FLUX 971

Fig. 6. Flux waveforms produced by Algorithms 1 and 2 when the limiting

Fig. 4. Vector diagram showing relationship between ~ and emf.
~ level is not correctly set show that Algorithm 2 does not produce distorted flux.

Fig. 7. Response of the pure integrator and Algorithm 2 to a sine input with
a dc offset.
Fig. 5. Comparison of flux waveforms estimated by different integration
algorithm (the motor is running under steady conditions when the LP filter
and integrators are put into operation).

actual flux amplitude and the limiting level, the larger the dc
drift will be. If the limiting level is set below the actual flux
amplitude, the output flux waveform will not contain any dc
component, but will be distorted. More discussions will be
given in Section III.

(a)
B. Algorithm 2: Modified Integrator with an Amplitude Limiter
To avoid the possible waveform distortion discussed above,
a new integration algorithm is developed. This algorithm,
shown in Fig. 2, is specially designed for ac motor flux
estimation. In ac motor drives, it is a common practice to
transform a set of three-phase variables in a-b-c frame into
two-phase variables in frame for various purposes. The
motor fluxes and in the frame can be obtained (b)
by integrating motor back emfs in the frame, which Fig. 8. Response of modified integrator using Algorithm 3, where the motor
can be obtained through abc to transform. The flux is running under steady-state conditions when the modified integrator is put
into operation: (a) estimated flux waveforms and (b) compensation level.
amplitude, defined as , is a dc signal and so
is the limiter output. The flux magnitude and angle can be
transformed back to its form through a Polar to Cartesian C. Algorithm 3: Modified Integrator with
transform block, whose outputs are sinusoidal waveforms an Adaptive Compensation
with a limited amplitude. The nonlinear distortion caused by
the saturation block in Fig. 1 is eliminated, resulting in an Algorithm 3 is designed for motor drives with variable flux
improved performance of this modified integrator. However, operations. Fig. 3 shows a block diagram of this algorithm in
the accuracy of the estimated flux still depends on how the which an adaptive controller is used. This scheme is developed
limiting level is set. If the motor operates at various flux levels, based on the fact that the motor flux is orthogonal to its
the limiting level should be adjusted accordingly. Therefore, back emf. A quadrature detector is proposed to detect the
this algorithm is suitable for applications where the motor flux orthogonality between the estimated flux and back emf. A
is not required to vary during operation. proportionalintegral (PI) regulator is used to generate an
972 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 13, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 1998

(a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 9. Response of modified integrator using Algorithm 3 to a step change in magnitude of emf : (a) input signal emf , (b) compensation level emf ,
(c) estimated flux showing no dc offset flux after the step changes in emf , and (d) estimated flux using pure integrator showing that the flux contains
a dc offset due to step changes in emf .

appropriate compensation level, which is given by

emf emf
(4)

where and are the constants of the PI regulator. The

magnitude of , which corresponds to the limiter output in
Fig. 2, is no longer fixed. It is now governed by (4).
The operating principle of the adaptive scheme can be
explained by using a vector diagram shown in Fig. 4. The
estimated flux vector is a sum of two vectors, a feedforward
vector which is the output of the LP filters ( and )
and a feedback vector which is composed of and .
Ideally, the flux vector should be orthogonal to the back
emf vector, and the output of the quadrature detector is zero.
When an initial value or dc drift is introduced to the integrator,
the above orthogonal relation is lost, and the phase angle
between the flux and emf vectors is no longer 90 , which
yields an error signal defined by
Fig. 10. Experimental setup for verifying the proposed integration algo-
emf emf emf rithms.

emf
Assuming that the magnitude of the feedback vector is
increased to as shown in Fig. 4 due to a dc offset or initial
value problem, the phase angle will be greater that 90 .
The quadrature detector will generate a negative error signal.
The output of the PI regulator is reduced and so is the
feedback vector. As a result, the flux vector moves toward
the original position of 90 until the orthogonal relationship
between and emf is reestablished. If is less than 90 for
some reason, an opposite process will occur, which brings
back to 90 Therefore, the modified integrator with the
adaptive control can adjust the flux compensation level
automatically to an optimal value such that the initial value
and dc drift problems are essentially eliminated.
(5)
III. SIMULATIONS
The performance of the proposed integration algorithms
is investigated by Matlab/Simulink. It is assumed in the
following simulations that the motor is already running in
steady state with a stator frequency of 10 rad/s when the
LP filter or integrators are put into operation. The cutoff
frequency ( ) used in the LP filter and proposed algorithms
is 20 rad/s. The magnitude of motor back emf is adjusted such
that the actual flux amplitude is equal to one per unit for the
convenience of discussion.
Fig. 5 shows the waveforms estimated by the LP filter,
pure integrator, and Algorithm 1. The component of the
flux, , is shown in the figure. It can be observed that
the LP filter produces a large error both in phase angle and
HU AND WU: NEW INTEGRATION ALGORITHMS FOR ESTIMATING MOTOR FLUX 973

(a)

(b)
m
Fig. 11. Results of Algorithm 3 when the motor runs at 60 Hz: (a) measured voltage, current, and estimated fluxes and (b) measured position  sd
and estimated flux angle 'est .

(a)

(b)
Fig. 12. Results of Algorithm 3 when the motor runs at 0.5 Hz: (a) measured voltage, current, and estimated fluxes and (b) measured rotor position
msd and estimated flux angle 'est .

in magnitude, the pure integrator holds a dc offset due to
the initial value problem since the sinusoidal back emf is
applied to the integrator at its zero crossing, and the output
of Algorithm 1 converges to the actual motor flux within one
and a half cycles.
Fig. 6 shows the results of Algorithms 1 and 2 with a
limiting level of 0.5 per unit which is improperly set on
purpose (the ideal limiting level should be equal to the
amplitude of actual flux which is one per unit in this case). The
flux waveform estimated by Algorithm 1 is distorted while that
by Algorithm 2 is not. However, Algorithm 2 still produces
some errors due to the improper limiting level. It should be
noted that the errors have been substantially reduced compared
to the output of the LP filter in Fig. 5. For motor drives which
require a constant flux operation, the limiting level can be set
at a value equal to the flux reference of the drive.
974 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 13, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 1998

(a)

(b)
m
Fig. 13. Results of the LP filter when the motor runs at 1 Hz, showing unacceptable errors between  sd and 'est : (a) measured voltage, current, and
estimated fluxes and (b) measured rotor position msd and estimated flux angle 'est .

(a)

(b)
Fig. 14. Estimation results of Algorithm 3 during the motor startup: (a) measured voltage, current, measured position msd , and estimated flux angle
'est and (b) estimated fluxes.

To investigate the dc drift problem, a dc bias with an
amplitude of 0.5 per unit is superimposed to sinusoidal emf
inputs. Fig. 7 shows the responses of the pure integrator and
Algorithm 2 to such input signals. It can be observed that the
output of the pure integrator diverges while the flux estimated
by Algorithm 2 is a stable sine wave with a negligible dc offset.
Fig. 8 shows the response of the modified integrator using
Algorithm 3 to the same operation conditions as those in
Fig. 5. The transient waveform of , which represents the
adaptive compensation level, is illustrated in Fig. 8(b). As
shown in the figure, the output of this modified integrator
quickly converges to the actual flux. The initial transient dies
away in about a half cycle.
Fig. 9 shows the behavior of Algorithm 3 to a step change
in emf magnitude. The transient waveforms of and
are illustrated in Fig. 9(b) and (c), respectively. The
HU AND WU: NEW INTEGRATION ALGORITHMS FOR ESTIMATING MOTOR FLUX
Fig. 15. Estimation results of Algorithm 3 when the motor speed reverses (10 to
and estimated flux angle 'est and (b) estimated fluxes.
Fig. 16. Estimation results of the LP filter when the motor speed reverses (10 to
can be observed.
response of the pure integrator is also presented in Fig. 9(d) for
comparison. Obviously, there is no dc offset in the flux wave-
form produced by Algorithm 3, whereas the pure integrator
generates an undesired positive dc offset after a step increase
in emf and then a negative dc offset after a step decrease.
It can be concluded that Algorithm 2 can be used in a drive
with a constant flux control while Algorithm 3 is most suitable
for the motor flux estimation under variable flux control.
IV. EXPERIMENTS
To verify the proposed integration algorithms, a syn-
chronous motor drive was constructed. Fig. 10 shows the
block diagram of the drive system where a conventional field-
oriented control is implemented. The front-end converter of
the drive system is a silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR), and
the synchronous motor (6 hp, 6 poles) is fed by a gate turn-off
975
(a)
(b)
010 Hz): m
(a) measured voltage, current, measured position  sd ,
010 Hz), where substantial differences between `msd and 'est
thyristor (GTO)-based pulsewidth modulation (PWM) current
source inverter. The rotor speed and position are detected by
a shaft encoder (2500 pulses per revolution) for field-oriented
control. The measured rotor position is also used for
verification purposes. To evaluate the performance of the
proposed algorithms, two flux estimators shown in the dotted
block were built and tested. A TMS320C31 DSP board is used
for real-time control. The sampling time is set at 1 ms due to
a relative low-switching frequency required by GTO devices.
Since the synchronous motor does not have a built-in flux
sensor, comparison between the estimated flux and the actual
flux in the motor may be difficult to make. However, the
proposed integration algorithms can be verified based on a
phenomenon that the rotor axis is coincident with the air-gap
flux axis when the motor operates under no-load conditions.
Therefore, a comparison between the estimated flux angle
976 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 13, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 1998

(a)

(b)
Fig. 17. Estimation results of Algorithm 3 when the motor flux varies: (a) measured voltage, current, and estimated flux and (b) compensation level cmp .

and measured rotor position can be used to evaluate
the performance of the proposed integrators provided that the
motor is unloaded.
A. Steady-State Performance
Fig. 11(a) shows the measured stator voltage, current, and
estimated fluxes using Algorithm 3 ( rad/s) when the
motor runs at 60 Hz. Fig. 11(b) gives a comparison between
the measured rotor position and estimated flux angle
which is calculated by . It can be observed
that the estimated angle and measured position are
well matched except at and . These discrepancies are
simply display errors due to the fact that the ratio of sampling
frequency (1 kHz) to stator frequency (60 Hz) is low, and
also these frequencies are not synchronized. Therefore, the
discrepancies do not reflect the accuracy of the algorithm.
Fig. 12 shows the estimated motor fluxes when the motor
runs at 0.5 Hz at which most other flux estimation algorithms
fail to work. The estimated and measured angles are in good
agreement. Clearly, Algorithm 3 can be used to accurately
estimate fluxes at both high- and low-motor speeds. The
estimation results using the LP filter ( rad/s) when
the motor runs at 1.0 Hz are given in Fig. 13 for comparison.
The LP filter produces large errors in both flux angle and
magnitude ( Wb is expected).
B. Dynamic Performance
The dynamic performance of the modified integrator using
Algorithm 3 is illustrated in Figs. 14 and 15. The estimated
flux angle in Fig. 14 follows the detected rotor position
very well during the motor startup. The same phenome-
non can be observed when the motor changes its speed from
200 (10 Hz) to 200 rpm ( 10 Hz) as shown in Fig. 15.
If an LP filter is employed as a flux estimator, the accuracy
of the estimated flux is expected to reduce, especially when the
motor runs at a vicinity of zero speed. Fig. 16 demonstrates
such a case where a substantial discrepancy between the
estimated flux angle and measured rotor position
occurs when the motor reverses its speed.
Fig. 17(a) shows the measured flux when the actual
motor flux is increased by 50%. Fig. 17(b) shows the adaptive
compensation level ( ) at the output of the PI regulator,
which is automatically adjusted such that the potential dc offset
in is eliminated.
V. CONCLUSIONS
Three integration algorithms for motor flux estimation are
proposed, investigated, and compared in this paper. These
algorithms are developed to solve practical problems asso-
ciated with pure integrators for motor flux estimation. The
basic operating principle is elaborated through Algorithm 1.
Using reference frame theory, Algorithm 2 is developed to
eliminate the nonlinear distortion produced by Algorithm 1.
This algorithm is suitable for applications where the motor
flux should be kept constant during operation. Algorithm 3,
evolved from the above two, uses an adaptive controller,
resulting in a superior dynamic and steady-state performance.
This algorithm is particularly suitable for high-performance
sensorless motor drivers where motor flux may vary during
operation. The performance of the proposed algorithms is
verified by simulation and experiment.
REFERENCES
[1] W. A. Hill, R. A. Turton, R. J. Dungan, and C. L. Schwalm, A vector-
controlled cycloconverter drive for an icebreaker, IEEE Trans. Ind.
Applicat., vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 10361042, 1987.
HU AND WU: NEW INTEGRATION ALGORITHMS FOR ESTIMATING MOTOR FLUX 977

[2] I. Takahashi and T. Noguchi, A new quick response and high efficiency
control strategy of an induction motor, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol.
22, no. 5, pp. 820827, 1986.
[3] R. Wu and G. R. Slemon, A permanent magnet motor drive without a
shaft sensors, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 10051011,
1991.
[4] X. Xu, R. Doncker, and D. W. Novotny, A stator flux oriented induction
machine drive, in IEEE PESC Conf. Rec., 1988, pp. 870876.
[5] H. Tajima and Y. Hori, Speed sensorless field oriented control of the
induction machine, in IEEE IAS Conf. Rec., 1991, pp. 385391.
[6] C. Schauder, Adaptive speed identification for vector control of induc-
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Bin Wu (S89M91) received the M.A.Sc. and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., Canada, in
1989 and 1993, respectively.
After being with Rockwell Automation/Allen-
Bradley, Inc., Cambridge, Ont., as a Senior De-
velopment Engineer, he joined Ryerson Polytechnic
University, Toronto, Ont., where he is currently an
Associate Professor. His research interests include
power converter topologies, motor drives, computer
simulation, and DSP applications in power engineer-
ing.
Dr. Wu was awarded the Gold Medal of the Governor General of Canada
in 1990. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario,
Canada.

Jun Hu was born in Zhejiang, China, in 1966. He

received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1988, 1991,
and 1995, respectively, all in electrical engineering.
He was appointed as a Lecturer in Electrical
Engineering at Tsinghua University in April 1994.
From 1995 to 1997, he worked as a Post-Doctoral
Fellow at Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto,
Ont., Canada. He joined Rockwell Science Center
(RSC), Thousand Oaks, CA, in October 1997, where
he is currently a Member of Technical Staff in
information technology. His research interests include power electronics, ac
drives, and motion control.