Sensorless Motor Parameter-Free Predictive Current Control of Synchronous Reluctance Motor Drives

Synchronous reluctance motors represent an emerging technology in general purpose drives. However, a strongly nonlinear behavior characterizes the electrical dynamics of such machines, making the design of the control architecture challenging. Parameter-free model predictive control is becoming a relevant alternative to standard control techniques. Its key feature is the capability of self-adapting to any operating point. Sensorless operation is a feature commonly requested to general purpose drives. However, parameter-free sensorless control has not been investigated yet. This paper proposes a framework to implement a sensorless parameter-free scheme, inspired to the saliency tracking concept. Some relevant issues of state-of-the-art control architectures, mainly due to the magnetic cross saturation, are addressed. The performances of the proposed scheme and the effectiveness of the developed solution to address the magnetic cross saturation are validated by means of simulations on a synchronous reluctance motor.