Position Estimator Employing Kalman Filter for PM Motors Driven with Binary-type Hall Sensors

Abstract

Application of vector control scheme for consumer products is enlarging to improve control performance. For the field-oriented control, accurate position detection is essential and generally requires expensive sensors. On the other hand, cost-reduction is important in home appliances, so that binary-type Hall-effect sensors are commonly used rather than using an expensive sensor such as an encoder. The control performance is directly influenced by the accuracy of the position information, and there exist non-uniformities related to Hall sensors in electrical and mechanical aspects, which result in distorted position information. Therefore, to get high-precision position information from low-resolution Hall sensors, this paper proposes a new position estimator consisting of a Kalman filter and feedforward compensation scheme, which generates a linearly changing position signal. The efficacy of the proposed scheme is verified by simulation and experimental results carried out with a 48-pole permanent magnet motor.