Performance Analysis of EKF-based Sensorless Induction Motor Drive using FPGA Controller

Induction Motor (IM) is widely used in power and industrial drives due to their ease of construction, ruggedness, and free maintenance. To achieve higher performance and robust stability, vector control methods are preferred over scalar control methods. Among various vector control methods, field-oriented control (FOC) is the most popular in modern AC drives. However, the cost and the complexity involved in extra wiring at hardware are the major drawbacks for the sensor-based IM. The industrial power sector demands high-performance real-time controllers to monitor and control the electric drive parameters for various power control applications. In this work, the performance investigation of the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is presented for the speed sensorless IM drive. The performance analysis is carried out by using a novel real-time FPGA-based Snetly controller (Xilinx ARTIX-7 (XC7A200T) FPGA Controller with a 150 MHz clock frequency). The main objective of this work is to estimate the rotor speed of a sensorless IM drive under different loading conditions. The results are validated and verified using MATLAB/Simulink software and Snetly Controller.