An Improved Direct Torque Control for Three-Level Inverter-Fed Induction Motor Sensorless Drive

A sensorless three-level neutral-point-clamped inverter-fed induction motor drive is proposed in this paper. The conventional direct torque control (DTC) switching table fails to consider the circuit limitations, such as neutral-point-balance and smooth vector switching, caused by the topology of a three-level inverter. Two kinds of modified schemes for three-level DTC are proposed to solve these problems. They also provide performance enhancement while maintaining robustness and simplicity. Fuzzy logic control and the speed-adaptive flux observer (with novel gain and load toque observation) are introduced to enhance the performance of the system. The issue of large starting current is investigated and solved by introducing the technique of preexcitation. A 32-bit fixed-point DSP-based motor drive is developed to achieve high-performance sensorless control over a wide speed range. The effectiveness of the proposed schemes is confirmed by simulation implementation and experimental validation.