Design and Implementation of Improved Gate Driver Circuit for Sensorless Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor Control

Awareness of environmental issues, including the depletion of natural resources, increasing levels of pollution, significant greenhouse gas emissions, and rising global temperatures, is an important factor promoting the use of electric vehicles (EVs) as a viable solution [1,2,3]. The motor controller is a fundamental control component of EVs, has significant effects on the efficiency of the drive system, and is related to the comfort design of EVs [4,5,6]. Hence, it is meaningful to investigate the motor controller in EV applications.

Permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM) are the most promising solution for power drive systems, including EVs, and are characterized by a robust structure, high power density, high efficiency, and a wide speed range [7,8]. The implementation of advanced sensorless motor control is rapidly being developed to improve motor drive performance in EVs. Sensorless motor control systems offer sophisticated computational control algorithms for reducing the cost of sensors, simplifying the wiring system, and reducing the overall size of the system [8,9,10]. To obtain superior motor drive control, in addition to advanced computational algorithms in the motor control process, the control circuit also plays an important role in EV applications [9,10,11,12]. The accuracy of the motor control process is influenced by the motor control circuit. The precision of the signal must be maintained to achieve good performance in the control process. An important problem is the behavior of the power switching components [13,14,15]. In this case, the effect of power switching components influences the signal information used in motor control processing, such as current information and the motor rotor position. Many studies have reduced this effect by implementing compensation using digital processing in computing systems [15,16]. However, because this does not significantly weaken the effect of the switching component behavior, this effect still occurs in the motor drive control system. This study focused on improving the motor control circuit by considering the effect of the switching component behavior in an insulated gate bipolar transistor-driven inverter (IGBT-Driven Inverter). Based on the analysis of the behavior of switching components, which causes ringing flow, a ringing suppression circuit is used to overcome this effect. An integrated system consisting of a hardware motor control process and a motor control circuit is implemented into the design of motor control devices that can be used for the development of EVs with motor control capabilities.

To achieve loss reduction in the control circuit and a high precision of the control process in actual motor control applications, extensive research has been conducted to improve the motor drive control process. In [17], a bootstrap circuit was proposed to reduce the switching loss in gate driver design. The implemented system incorporated a mitigation circuit for performance improvement. The acceleration of the switching process and the reduction in switching losses can be obtained through the simple circuit proposed by the above-mentioned study. However, practical issues regarding component behavior in the integrated system were not discussed, although this condition should be considered to enhance the gate driver performance. In [18], the switched inductor (SL) technique was applied to reduce the current stress in the converter design and mitigate the resulting current ripple. Current stress analysis was carried out on the DC–DC converter system to optimize the SL performance by reducing the current ripple. The findings revealed that reducing the current ripple in the system can reduce the power loss and switching loss. Therefore, current precision is an important consideration for improving the performance of the power converter system. A previous study [19] focused on the failure operation in a high–low side inverter driver. A bootstrap circuit can protect the switching operation when the supply voltage drops. This circuit is suitable for the half bridge inverter configuration used in motor control applications. In actual motor control implementations, many electronics systems must operate with several parts to facilitate the control process. Therefore, the gate driver circuit should perform well to ensure a smooth and safe process. In [20], the Optoisolator integrated circuit (IC) provided good protection when implemented in motor control. Based on the controlled concept in transistor–transistor logic, gate driver circuit design can be achieved. For efficient design, the component usage should be minimized. Consequently, the number of protection components in each side (two components) should be minimized. Additionally, motor control systems proceed using a chopper drive and simple-structure devices, but the probability of failure or the noise spike effect have not been investigated. In [21], compensator design was implemented for an IGBT-driven inverter. The discrete system employed by a field programmable gate array (FPGA) introduces additional execution time requirements for computational systems. A previous study [22] investigated the compensator for the voltage source inverter in the EV motor controller and proposed a design motor control circuit. The losses from IGBT switching that impact overshoot and transient behavior under ideal conditions were investigated via simulation. In this case, practical issues in the motor controller process can be observed clearly only through simulation. Therefore, it is important to investigate the precision parameter used in the input control process. In [23], actual PMSM motor control was implemented in the FPGA system, and the structure and computation of the control process were explained, focusing on the precision of the motor current as the input of the motor control process to improve the control procedure. The compensator in analog to digital converter (ADC) system design in the FPGA block function aims to reduce the signal spike in the motor current. Notably, the actual motor current includes substantial noise. In [24], the hardware design of the motor control circuit was presented. The printed circuit board (PCB) layout of the implemented hardware system must be considered in the current measurement process. Because many motor control implementations employ vector control in the motor control process, PCB design for motor control hardware emphasizes the optimization of the current measurement results. To improve the performance of the motor control system in the proposed hardware design, system losses should be minimized, the measurement method should be improved, and the precision of vector control in the motor control process should be better maintained. A previous study [25] realized a sensorless PMSM based on the Back-EMF observer using machine learning, which was used to adjust certain motor measurement parameters. By reducing noise in the machine learning approach, results were obtained with high accuracy. Another study [26] investigated the application of modern control techniques by considering several conditions to test the control response. The above-mentioned study showed the influence of signal noise effects on the optimization of the control response, such as the time required to reach steady-state conditions. Therefore, in modern control implementations, high performance can be achieved by eliminating signal noise.