This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TTE.2016.2538180, IEEE
Transactions on Transportation Electrification
1

Current Injection based On-line Parameter and

VSI Nonlinearity Estimation for PMSM Drives
Using Current and Voltage DC Components
1
Guodong Feng, Member, IEEE, 2Chunyan Lai, Student Member, IEEE
3
Kaushik Mukherjee, Senior Member, IEEE and 4Narayan C. Kar, Senior Member, IEEE
G. Feng, C. Lai and N. C. Kar are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
K. Mukherjee is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, India.
(e-mail: 1Guodong.Feng@uwindsor.ca, 2lai112@uwindsor.ca, 3kmukherjee@ee.iiests.ac.in, 4nkar@uwindsor.ca).

AbstractTo develop a high-performance and reliable permanent
magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) drive for electric vehicle
(EV) applications, accurate knowledge of the PMSM parameters
is of significance. This paper investigates online estimation of
PMSM parameters and VSI nonlinearity using current injection
method in which magnetic saturation is also considered. Firstly, a
novel DC component based current injection model considering
VSI nonlinearity is proposed, which employs the DC components
of dq-axis currents and voltages for PMSM parameter and VSI
distorted voltage estimation. This method can eliminate the
influence of rotor position error on VSI nonlinearity estimation.
Secondly, a simplified linear equation is employed to model the
cross- and self-saturation of the dq-axis inductances during
current injection, which can facilitate the estimation of the
inductance variations induced by magnetic saturation. Thirdly, a
novel current compensation strategy is proposed to minimize the
torque ripples caused by current injection, which contributes to
making our approach applicable to both surface and interior
PMSMs. Therefore, the proposed on-line parameter estimation
approach can estimate the winding resistance, rotor flux, VSI
distorted voltage, and the varying dq-axis inductances under
different operating conditions. The proposed approach is
experimentally validated on a down-scaled laboratory interior
PMSM prototyped for direct-drive EV powertrain.
Index Terms PMSM, Online parameter estimation, VSI
nonlinearity, Magnetic saturation, Current injection.
I. INTRODUCTION
Precise estimation of PMSM parameters is critical to achieve
high-performance and reliable PMSM drives, which have high
demand in the electric vehicle (EV) traction applications due to
their strict requirements in terms of high efficiency, compact
design, light weight and fast dynamic response, and the harsh
operating environment in a vehicle [1]-[5]. For PMSMs based
direct-drive EV application, high current is required to deliver
the propulsion torque, so the issues related to temperature and
magnetic saturation are critical. The rise of temperature will
induce the winding resistance to increase and rotor flux linkage
to decrease, and the magnetic saturation will cause the dq-axis
inductances to vary [6]-[10]. In other words, different
operations in direct-drive EV applications will result in
different PMSM parameters. Therefore, the knowledge of
accurate PMSMs parameters is important in facilitating the
design and development of high-performance drive and control
algorithms for direct-drive EV applications.
On-line parameter estimation is capable of adaptively
updating PMSM parameters for different operating conditions,
which can effectively improve the machine and drive
performances. It has been extensively investigated in the
literature. In [11], extended Kalman filter is employed to
estimate the rotor flux in which the winding resistance and
inductances are assumed to be known. In [12], the recursive
least square (RLS) algorithm is applied to estimate the dq-axis
inductances while the winding resistance and rotor flux are set
to their nominal values. It is rank-deficient to estimate more
than two parameters by using the steady-state machine
equations [13], [14]. Therefore, many papers estimate some
parameters while fix the rest to their nominal values. However,
the PMSM parameters are varying nonlinearly, so it will
introduce great estimation errors to fix some parameters during
on-line parameter estimations.
In order to solve the rank-deficient problem, many
researchers have investigated to inject pulsating signals such as
currents and position-offsets into the machine to obtain
additional steady-state machine equations for on-line parameter
estimation [15]-[17]. In particular, current injection methods
have aroused considerable interests, because it is capable of
estimating the winding resistance, dq-axis inductances as well
as rotor flux. In [13], the current injection method is proposed
to estimate the winding resistance and rotor flux of a surface
PMSM without the influence of magnetic saturation. However,
they are unable to estimate the varying dq-axis inductances due
to magnetic saturation. Moreover, their method is limited to
id=0 control and can cause high torque variations during current
injection, which will degrade the drive system performance.
During parameter estimation, the reference voltages from the
PI controller are often used as the voltage measurements [18].
However, the reference voltage is not equal to the actual
voltage due to the VSI nonlinearity [19]-[21]. Therefore,
neglecting the VSI nonlinearity will certainly affect the
performance of on-line parameter estimation. In [22], [23], the
mathematical model of VSI nonlinearity is proposed and used
for VSI nonlinearity compensation. This VSI model has been
employed in [9] and [24] for parameter estimation, in which the
VSI distorted voltage is calculated from the parameters of the
power electronic devices. However, the parameters of the
power electronic devices are not always available and they
change at different operating conditions. In order to deal with
this problem, reference [18] proposes to estimate the VSI
distorted voltage by combining the VSI model with the PMSM
machine equations. The VSI distorted voltages are sixth order
harmonics, therefore, [18] uses the high frequency components
for distorted voltage estimation. However, the high-frequency
components contain not only the sixth-harmonic but also other

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order harmonics and measurement noises. The non-ideal

high-pass filter may also impose some distortions to the
high-frequency components. In [25], the genetic algorithm is
applied for parameter estimation considering VSI nonlinearity.
However, the estimation of q-axis inductance is still influenced
by the distorted voltage, the estimation of d-axis inductance
neglects the magnetic saturation and the estimation of the
winding resistance and rotor flux are restricted to the id=0
control. More importantly, the VSI distorted voltages are
functions of the rotor position, so the position error has a great
influence on the parameter estimation. Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the current injection approach.
This paper proposes a novel current injection method to
Figure 1 shows the implementation of the current injection
estimate the winding resistance, dq-axis inductances, rotor flux
method. When the PMSM reaches the steady state, the steady
as well as the VSI distorted voltage with consideration of
state measurements are at first collected, and then two
magnetic saturation. First, a novel DC component based
perturbations in d-axis reference currents are injected one after
estimation model considering VSI nonlinearity is proposed for
the other into the drive system, ensuring that measurement
parameter estimation, which can eliminate the influence of the
results are collected for each occasion after steady state is
rotor position error as well as the zero-mean measurement
reached. After the measurement, the parameter estimation is
noises by employing the DC components for parameter
performed. It should be noted that for interior PMSM, the
estimation. Secondly, a linear equation is employed to model
injected d-axis current will introduce additional reluctance
the cross- and self-saturation of the inductance during current
torque causing torque ripples. To deal with this, a current
injection. Combining this model with the above DC component
compensation strategy is proposed which will be detailed in
based estimation model allows estimating the inductances as
Section IV. With this compensation strategy, the torque ripple
well as their variations during current injection. Thirdly, a
caused by current injection can be minimized.
q-axis current compensation strategy is proposed to minimize
The voltage sensors are rarely used in the PMSM drive and thus
the torque ripples caused by the injected d-axis current, which
the reference voltages from the PI controller are often utilized
can not only reduce the influence of current injection on the
as the voltage measurements for parameter estimation [17]. As
drive performance, but also make the proposed approach
shown in Fig. 1, the controller sends the reference voltages
applicable for both surface and interior PMSM. In this way, the
ud*and uq* to the VSI inverter, and the inverter produces the
estimation of winding resistance, rotor flux and VSI distorted
voltages ud and uq to the PMSM drive system. However, the
voltage can be independent from magnetic saturation.
command voltages are not equal to the stator voltages due to the
Meanwhile, the varying dq-axis inductances can be estimated
VSI nonlinearity, but their relationships can be modeled as
during current injection by considering magnetic saturation.
ud ud ud
* err
The proposed approach is employed in a field-oriented
(2)
controlled drive to estimate the parameters of a laboratory uq* uq uqerr
interior PMSM rated at 4.25 kW designed for EV applications.
where uderr and uqerr are the dq-axis distorted voltages due to the
II. CURRENT INJECTION BASED PMSM MODEL CONSIDERING VSI nonlinearity. The VSI nonlinearity is generally caused by
VSI NONLINEARITY the dead-time effects, the switching times and voltage drops of
the power devices and the DC bus voltage measurement errors.
This paper employs the current injection method proposed in The dq-axis circuit model including the VSI nonlinearity is
[9], [13], [15], [18] for PMSM parameter estimation. Fig. 1 presented in Fig. 2, in which the distorted voltages contain three
presents a schematic diagram of the current injection method parts and they are modeled as [2], [16], [17], [25]
which is based on injecting different d-axis currents into the
ud Dd Vdead rcd id U sin
err

drive system to obtain K sets of steady-state PMSM equations (3)

as in (1) for parameter estimation. uqerr DqVdead rcd iq U cos
udi Ridi i Lqi iqi where rcd is the equivalent resistance; is the angle of the
(1) voltage vector to the q-axis; Vdead and U are the distorted
uqi Riqi i Ldi idi i M , i 1,..., K
voltage terms; the distorted coefficients Dd and Dq are
where ud, uq, id, iq, Ld and Lq are the direct axis and quadrature
periodical functions of the rotor position, and the current
axis voltages, currents and inductances, respectively, R is the
angle, between the current vector and q-axis as in (4).
winding resistance, M is the magnet flux, and is the electrical
rotor speed. The subscript i is used to discriminate different
Dd 2 sin int 3 ++
steady states. The current injection can be completed in a very 6 3
short duration. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume R and M to (4)

be constant during current injection. However, the inductances Dq 2 cos int 3 ++
are varying due to the magnetic saturation, that is, LdiLdj and 6 3
LqiLqj for ij. This paper will demonstrate that it is able to Here int{x} is a function of taking the nearest integer of x.
estimate the winding resistance, rotor flux as well as dq-axis Substituting (2)~(4) into (1) yields
inductances by injecting two d-axis currents into the drive.

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*
dq-axis voltages and currents. Here, udq and idq are equal to
the average measurements of voltages and currents, so they can
be obtained from (7). In particular, this paper uses the average
measurements in each electrical cycle for parameter estimation,
so in (7), N=t /Ts, where t is the time of one electrical cycle
and Ts is the sampling time.
N N

udq k , idq
idq k
1 1
udq
* *
(7)
N k 1 N k 1
Substituting (7) into (6) yields the DC component based
estimation model (8) and (9), where and
are the DC
components of the distorted coefficients.
Fig. 2. dq-axis equivalent circuit model including VSI nonlinearity.
udi* Ridi i Lqi iqi DdiVdead
u R rcd idi i Lqi iqi DdiVdead U sin i
*
di (8)
(5) uqi* Riqi i Ldi idi i M DqiVdead , i 1,..., K
u R rcd iqi i Ldi idi i M DqiVdead U cos i
*
qi
1 N

In real applications, the resistance term rcd is regarded as a part Ddi 2 sin k int 3 k +i 6
of winding resistance and this is the reason why the estimated N
k 1 3
winding resistance is normally larger than the actual one. (9)
1 N

Moreover, the term Vdead is much larger than U [14] and thus the Dqi 2 cos k int 3 k +i
last distorted terms containing U are neglected in this paper. N k 1 6 3
With these in mind, (5) can be simplified as (6). It can be seen from (9) that and are only functions of
udi* Ridi i Lqi iqi DdiVdead the angle of current vector, i , and are independent of rotor
(6) position, and they are constant at steady state. Thus, the
uqi* Riqi i Ldi idi i M DqiVdead , i 1,..., K and can be computed in advance for
coefficients
From (6), the VSI nonlinearity introduces the distorted voltage parameter estimation. Fig. 4 presents the at different
and
terms DdVdead and DqVdead into the steady-state equations. It increases
steady states. It can be seen that the magnitude of
should be noted that when a small amount of current is injected

with the increase of , while the magnitude of decreases
into the machine, the variation of the distorted voltage Vdead is
not significant. So it is assumed to be constant in this paper to with the increase of . Moreover, when is small, is almost
simplify the parameter estimation. The Dd and Dq waveforms at constant and the relation between and can be modeled
=0 degree are shown in Fig. 3. It can be seen that they have with a linear equation.
sixth-order harmonics and Dq is larger than Dd. Therefore,
ignoring VSI nonlinearity has a great impact on the inductance
estimation.
At the steady state, i is fixed, so DdVdead and DqVdead are
functions of rotor position. Therefore, the estimation of Vdead
will be affected by rotor position error. In what follows, the DC
components of the measurements are employed for parameter
estimation, which can efficiently eliminate the influence of
rotor position error on the parameter estimation.

III. DC COMPONENT BASED ONLINE PARAMETER AND VSI

NONLINEARITY MODELING AND ESTIMATION Fig. 3. Waveforms of the distorted coefficients Dd and Dq with =0 degree.
A. DC Component based PMSM Parameter Estimation Model
The instantaneous measurements are widely used for
parameter estimation. Specifically, at time instant k, the
instantaneous currents and voltages, idq(k) and vdq(k), are used
for parameter estimation. However, at the steady state the
distorted coefficients Ddq(k) are functions of the rotor position.
It is known that the rotor position error is inevitable, so the
accuracy of Ddq(k) is affected and in turn it will influence the
parameter estimation.
This paper proposes to use the DC components of the dq-axis
current and voltage measurements for parameter estimation.
Fig. 4. The DC components of Dd and Dq at different current angle.
* and
Specifically, let udq idq be the DC components of the

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Remark 1: Using DC component based estimation model for Begin

parameter estimation brings two important advantages: 1) the
VSI distorted voltages becomes constant at the steady state, Inject d-axis currents to obtain measurement samples
which can efficiently eliminate the influences of position errors udqi, idqi and i, i=1, 2, 3
on the parameter estimation; and 2) it works as an average filter
which can filter out the zero-mean measurement noise. Compute the DC components of the measurements
B. PMSM Parameter Estimation Approach
*
udqi (k ), idqi (k ), i (k ), i 1, 2,3, k 1, 2,3,

Since the current injection can be completed in a very short Use (9) to compute the coefficient
period of time and the current control loop is much faster than Ddi , Dqi , i 1, 2,3
the mechanical system response, this paper assumes that the
load torque is constant during current injection. Let Tei be the Use (12) and (18) to estimate
electromagnetic torque at the ith steady state, i=1,, K, then the R, V dead
constant load torque leads to (10). With some mathematical
substitution, (11) can be obtained from (8). Substituting (10) Use (13), (15) and (18) to estimate
into (11) yields the result (12). It can be seen that R and Vdead M , Ldi , Lqi , i 1, 2,3
can be estimated from (12) with some estimation algorithm for
K=3. In what follows, the RLS algorithm will be employed for End
parameter estimation. More importantly, the estimation of R
Fig. 5. The flowchart of the recursive least square based parameter estimation.
and Vdead is not influenced by the magnetic saturation.
Tei =Tej , 1 i , j K (10) where i=1,, K. It can be seen that the rotor flux and the
dq-axis inductance can be estimated from (16) because the rank

udi* idi +uqi* iqi R idi2 +iqi2 iTei Dqi iqi Ddi idi Vdead (11) of (16) is equal to the number of parameters to be estimated.
j u i +u i u i +u i =
*
di di
*
qi qi i
*
dj dj
*
qj qj
Remark 2: When one of the injected current is zero, for
example, id2=0, (16) can be rewritten as
Vdead D i D i D i D i (12) D V
uq*2 Ri (17)
j qi qi di di i qj qj dj dj q2 q 2 dead 2 M

R i + i i + i , 1 i, j K
2 2 2 2 Thus, the rotor flux can be directly estimated from (17) without
j di qi i dj qj
the influence the magnetic saturation.
Without loss of generality, let and be the winding C. RLS based Parameter Estimation Method
resistance and VSI distorted voltage estimated from (12).
Substituting them into (12) yields (13) and (14) This paper employs the recursive least square (RLS)
algorithm for online parameter estimation because it is simple
D V
Ri
udi* di di dead i Lqi iqi (13) and robust. Given the model (18) where yk and kT are known
D V model parameters while x is the model parameters to be
uqi* Riqi qi dead i Ldi idi i M (14) estimated, the RLS algorithm for estimating x is listed in (19).
where i=1,, K. It can be seen that the q-axis inductances at yk Tk x (18)
different current magnitudes can be estimated by using (13),
even though there is magnetic saturation. However, it is unable xk 1 xk Gk 1 y k 1 Tk 1 xk
to estimate the rotor flux and d-axis inductance from (14), 1
because the number of parameters to be estimated is (K+1) but Gk 1 Pk k 1 1 Tk 1 Pk k 1 (19)
the rank of (14) is K.
Pk 1 Pk Gk 1Tk 1 Pk
Since the magnitude of the injected current is small, the
linear equation (15) is used to model the cross- and self- The RLS based parameter estimation can be implemented with
saturation of dq-axis inductances during current injection. (12)~(19). For instance, based on (13) the RLS based q-axis
Ld Ld 0 d id q iq inductance estimated can be implemented with (19) where
(15) x Lqi , i iqi ,
Lq Lq 0 q iq d id (20)
D V
y udi* Ri
where q and d are the d-axis cross- and self-saturation di di dead

constants, respectively; d and q are the q-axis cross- and The estimation of other parameters can be obtained similarly.
self-saturation constants, respectively, and Ld0 and Lq0 are the The flowchart of the proposed RLS based online parameter
d-axis and q-axis unsaturated inductances, respectively. In real estimation is illustrated in Fig. 5. It should be emphasized that
implementation, the magnitude of injected current is small, so the proposed algorithm is computation-efficient because its
the cross-saturation effect is much smaller than self-saturation computation complexity is proportional to the number of
effect [26]-[29], so the cross-saturation constants d and q are measurements used for parameter estimation. Assume that N
assumed to be zero to simplify the estimation. Substituting (15) measurements are used, then the computation complexity is
into (14), (16) is obtained. O(N). Specifically, the proposed algorithm involves iteratively
D V ( L i i 2 )
udi Ri
* executing (19), and the number of iterations is equal to N. For R
di di dead i q 0 qi q qi
(16) and Vdead estimation, k, Pk and Gk are 22 dimensional matrix,
* D V
uqi Ri qi
qi dead i Ld 0 idi d idi M
2
so each iteration involves computing a 22 dimensional matrix
inversion and some matrix multiplications, which does not

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contain high dimensional matrix computation. Therefore, the

computation complexity is O(N) because it involves N
iterations. For Lq estimation, k, Pk and Gk are one dimensional,
so the computation complexity is O(N). For Ld and M
estimation, k, Pk and Gk are 22 dimensional matrix, so the
computation complexity is also O(N). In summary, the
computation complexity of the proposed algorithm is O(N).
For instance, the paper uses 800 measurements for parameter
estimation, and the proposed algorithm can be executed within
0.01 second on a standard PC. Moreover, the experimental
results demonstrate that the estimation converges in a very fast
speed. Therefore, when the stop criterion is set as the update
between two consecutive iterations is smaller than a threshold,
the computation of our algorithm can be further reduced.

IV. CURRENT COMPENSATION STRATEGY FOR TORQUE RIPPLE

MINIMIZATION
For interior PMSM, the injected d-axis current will introduce
additional reluctance torque which is negligible for a surface
PMSM, but it will cause obvious torque ripples during current
injection. To minimize the torque ripple caused by current
injection, this paper proposes a feed-forward compensation
strategy to counteract this part of reluctance torque.
Specifically, as shown in Fig. 1, during the d-axis current
injection, an additional q-axis current is injected to produce
extra negative magnet torque to counteract the reluctance
torque induced by the injected d-axis current. Thus, the
additional magnet torque should be equal to the induced
reluctance torque. When the d-axis current idi is injected, (21)
should be satisfied to minimize the torque ripple.
M iq Ld Lq id1iq iq1id id iq 0 (21)
where id=idi-id1 and iq=iqi-iq1 denote the variations of the
d-axis and q-axis currents to their original steady-state values,
respectively. With (21), the additional q-axis current to be
compensated is given in (22).
Fig. 6. dq-axis current and torque profiles without and with the proposed
current compensation. (a) Without compensation at 10Nm. (b) With
compensation at 10 Nm. (c) Without compensation at 20Nm. (b) With
compensation at 20 Nm.
Moreover, Fig. 6 suggests that the compensated q-axis current
does not influence the steady-state performance of the drive
system, and it does not require accurate knowledge on the
model parameters to compute the compensated current, because
the PI controller is able to automatically modify the control
errors. Thus, the proposed approach can be applied to both
surface and interior PMSMs.
V. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS

iq
Lq Ld iq1id (22)
The proposed approach is tested on a laboratory interior PMSM
drive system that is designed for direct-drive EV applications as
Ld Lq idi M shown in Fig. 7. It is controlled by FPGA-based real-time
simulator (RT-Lab) and fed by an IGBT module. The drive
In the experiment, two d-axis currents are injected into the
system consists of a test motor and a dyno machine that can be
interior PMSM drive system for parameter estimation. Thus,
independently controlled to produce the desired torque. The
the q-axis current in (22) is compensated to minimize the torque
torque transducer can measure the output torque of the test
ripple caused by current injection. It should be emphasized that
motor, and the thermal detector can monitor the temperature of
the nominal values of the dq-axis inductances and rotor flux can
the winding resistance. The detailed parameters of the test
be used to compute the compensated q-axis current in (22),
motor are listed in Tables I.
because the PI controller is able to automatically modify the
control errors. TABLE I: THE DESIGN PARAMETERS OF THE TESTED INTERIOR PMSM
In order to evaluate the proposed current compensation Rated current 15 A
method, the test motor is operated under two different loading Rated speed 575 rpm
conditions, namely, 10 Nm and 20 Nm. The dq-axis currents
Rated voltage 275 V
and the electromagnetic torque without current compensation
Winding resistance (at T=22) 1
are given in Fig.6 (a) and (c). It can be seen that the torque
Winding resistance (at T=120) 1.5
ripples are caused by the injected d-axis current, and the torque
ripples are increasing with the increase of loading conditions. Magnet flux (at T=22) 0.67 Wb
Therefore, it will influence the drive performance without any Magnet flux (at T=120) 0.63Wb
compensation strategy. The dq-axis currents and the output Number of pole pairs 4
torque with the proposed compensation strategy are shown in
Fig. 6 (b) and (d). It can be seen that the torque ripples caused
by the injected d-axis current have been efficiently reduced.

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Transactions on Transportation Electrification
Fig. 7. Experimental setups for parameter estimation. (a) Inverter and control
circuits. (b) Temperature measurement. (c) Dyno and test motors.
Fig. 8. Resistance estimation results by using the proposed and compared
estimation approaches. (a) At speed of 50 rpm. (b) At speed of 200 rpm.
During the experiment, the proposed approach is validated on
the test motor operating at 50 rpm and 200 rpm, and the loading
dyno machine is controlled to produce a load torque of 20 Nm
for the test motor. The vector control shown in Fig. 1 is
employed for motor control and parameter estimation.
Following the implementation flowchart, when the PMSM
drive system reaches its steady state, the first steady-state
measurements are collected, and then two different d-axis
currents (id1=-1 A and id2=-2 A) are orderly injected into the
drive system and the corresponding steady-state measurements
are collected accordingly. The proposed approach is performed
following the flowchart in Fig. 5 and the results are as follows.
A. Winding Resistance Estimation
The value of the winding resistance tested at room temperature
is 1 and it will increase to about 1.5 when the winding
temperature rises to 120 . The 50 rpm experiment is
performed at room temperature, so the nominal winding
resistance is 1 , while the 200 rpm experiment is performed at
the temperature of 40, so the nominal winding resistance is
about 1.1 according to the linear thermal model. In the
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Fig. 9. VSI distorted voltage estimation results obtained from the proposed
on-line estimation approach at motor speeds of 50 rpm and 200 rpm.
experiment, investigations with and without considering VSI
nonlinearity are performed to highlight that the estimation
performance can be improved by considering VSI nonlinearity.
Here, without considering VSI nonlinearity means that the
VSI distorted voltage Vdead is set to be zero during estimation.
Figures 8(a) and (b) present the estimation of winding
resistance at 50 rpm and 200 rpm, respectively. It can be seen
that without considering VSI nonlinearity, the estimated
winding resistance is 1.21 at 50 rpm and 1.25 at 200 rpm;
while considering VSI nonlinearity, the estimated resistance is
1.01 at 50 rpm and 1.198 at 200 rpm. Without considering
VSI nonlinearity, the estimation errors are 0.21 at 50 rpm and
0.15 at 200 rpm, while considering that, the estimation errors
are 0.01 at 50 rpm and 0.098 at 200 rpm. Obviously, the
estimated winding resistance is much more accurate with
respect to the nominal value by considering VSI nonlinearity.
The resistance estimation method proposed in [10] is compared
with our approach. The compared method uses the
instantaneous measurements and RLS algorithm for
parameter estimation. As shown in Fig.8, for the compared
method, the estimated resistance is 0.9 at 50 rpm and 1.217
at 200 rpm, so the estimation errors are 0.1 at 50 rpm and
0.117 at 200 rpm. Obviously, the proposed approach can
improve the estimation performance by using the DC
components of the measurements.
The resistance is estimated from (12), so the estimation error is
mainly caused by VSI nonlinearity apart from the measurement
noises. The estimation error due to VSI nonlinearity is given in
(23). The current injection can be finished in a very short period
of time, so the rotor speed can be assumed to be constant during
current injection, and then (23) can be simplified as (24).
j Dqi iqi Ddi idi -i Dqj iqj Ddj idj
R Vdead (23)
2
2 2
j idi + iqi -i idj + iqj
2
R
D i Ddi idi
qi qi -D i D i V
qj qj dj dj
(24)
i2
di +i 2
qi - i +i
2
dj
2
qj
dead
As suggested from (24), the estimation error is proportional to
the VSI distorted voltage and it is independent of the rotor
speed. The estimated VSI distorted voltage at 50 and 200 rpm
are shown in Fig. 9. It can be seen that Vdead converges to about
0.36 V. Thus, for id0=0 and id1=1 A, the estimation error is 0.25
approximately 25% of the nominal value. The experimental
result shows that the estimation error due to VSI nonlinearity is
about 0.2 at 50 rpm, which agrees with the theoretical results.
Thus, the winding resistance estimation performance is
improved by considering the VSI nonlinearity. Moreover, the
estimated winding resistance is increasing with the rising of
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TTE.2016.2538180, IEEE
Transactions on Transportation Electrification
Fig. 10. Rotor flux estimation results of the proposed approach and the
compared method. (a) At motor of 50 rpm. (b) At speed of 200 rpm.
temperature, so the estimated winding resistance can be used
for temperature monitoring. However, as indicated in (5), the
winding resistance contains the equivalent resistances of power
devices (rcd), so the estimated winding resistance will be larger
than the actual value.
From the experimental results, the resistance estimation error
at 200 RPM is a slightly larger than that at 50 RPM. However,
the flux and inductance estimation at high speed is better than
that at low speed, which will be demonstrated in the following
results. One reason is that the voltage drop due to winding
resistance, rotor flux and inductances are ur=Riq, uf=M,
uld=Ldid and ulq=Lqiq, respectively. It can be seen that only ur
is independent from rotor speed, while uf, uld and ulq are
proportional to the rotor speed. Thus, the ratios of ur to the
dq-axis voltages (ur /ud and ur /uq) are decreasing with the
increase of rotor speed, and thus the influence of measurement
noise on resistance estimation is increasing as well.
B. Rotor Flux Linkage Estimation
The nominal value of rotor flux is about 0.67 Wb at the room
temperature at 50 rpm and 0.66 Wb at 40oC at 200 rpm. Figs.
10(a) and (b) present the rotor flux estimation at 50 and
200rpm, respectively. For our approach, at 50 rpm, the
estimated rotor flux is 0.95 Wb without considering VSI
nonlinearity and 0.775 Wb considering the VSI nonlinearity;
while at 200 rpm, the estimated rotor flux is 0.701 Wb without
considering VSI nonlinearity and 0.678 Wb considering the
VSI nonlinearity. Thus, without considering VSI nonlinearity,
the flux estimation error is 0.28 Wb at 50 rpm and 0.041 Wb at
200 rpm, while with considering that, the flux estimation error
is 0.105 Wb at 50rpm and 0.018 Wb at 200 rpm. The flux
estimation at higher speed is much more accurate than that at
lower speed. The reason is that the voltage drop due to rotor
flux is (M), so the estimation error can be approximately
denoted as (uerr/), where uerr is the voltage error. Thus, the flux
estimation error is inversely proportional to the speed, and it at
50 rpm is five times larger than that at 200 rpm.
Moreover, the flux estimation is more accurate by
considering the VSI nonlinearity, but at high speed the
estimation is similar with and without considering the VSI
nonlinearity. The reason is as follows. Supposing that other
parameters are accurate, and then based on (14), the flux
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7
estimation error caused by VSI nonlinearity can be denoted as
DV
M d dead (25)
Equation (25) indicates that the flux estimation error due to VSI
nonlinearity is inversely proportional to the speed, and it
accounts for about 4.5% and 1.4% of the nominal value at 50
rpm and 200 rpm, respectively. Thus, at low speed, the flux
estimation is significantly influenced by VSI nonlinearity, but
at high speed, the flux estimation error due to VSI nonlinearity
is negligible.
The flux estimation method proposed in [10] is compared
with the proposed approach. Specifically, in the compared
method, it uses the instantaneous measurements and the RLS
algorithm for parameter estimation. Moreover, the VSI
nonlinearity is considered in the compared method, and it is
restricted to the id=0 control and neglects the voltage drop
caused by d-axis inductance in parameter estimation. This
comparative study is to highlight that the proposed approach is
able to improve the estimation performance by using the DC
components of the measurements. Fig. 10 also presents the
comparison results of flux estimation. It can be seen that for the
method proposed, the estimated flux considering VSI
nonlinearity at 50 rpm and 200 rpm are 0.87 Wb and 0.7 Wb,
respectively. The compared method neglects the term Ldid in
flux estimation. At 200 rpm, the d-axis current is not exact zero,
but varies from -1 A to 1 A, so the term Ldid will introduce a
noise of amplitude of 2.5 V, which will result in an estimation
error of 2.5/=0.02 Wb. It can be seen from Fig. 10 that the
proposed approach has a much better flux estimation than the
compared method. Moreover, the proposed approach can be
applied to both surface and interior PMSM, and it considers the
magnetic saturation and thus is not restricted to id=0 control.
C. Inductance Estimation
Figures 11 and 12 present the estimated dq-axis inductances
with and without considering VSI nonlinearity at 50 and 200
rpm. The nominal dq-inductances at different current levels are
listed in Table II, and the detailed estimated inductances are
listed in Table III. It can be seen that the inductance variation
due to magnetic saturation has been estimated as can be seen
from Table III that the inductance value at different current
level is different. For id=0, the estimated Ld and Lq at 200 rpm
are 26.5 mH and 96 mH without considering VSI nonlinearity,
and they are 28.2 mH and 96 mH considering VSI nonlinearity.
Thus, the VSI nonlinearity has a negligible influence on q-axis
inductance estimation. The reason is as follows.
Supposing that the resistance and flux estimation are
accurate, and then based on (8), the VSI nonlinearity induced
dq-axis inductance estimation errors can be approximately
denoted as
DV DqVdead
Lq d dead , Ld (26)
iq id
From (26), the estimation error is inversely proportional to the
speed and the current. When id is zero, Lq is zero; when id is -1
A, Lq is less than 2 mH at 50 rpm and 0.5 mH at 200 rpm.
Thus, the q-inductance estimation error agrees with the
experimental results listed in Table III. However, when id=-1 A,
Ld is about 40 mH at 50rpm and 10 mH at 200 rpm.
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Transactions on Transportation Electrification
8

low speed. However, by considering the VSI nonlinearity, the

proposed approach is able to accurately estimate the d-axis
inductance.
The proposed approach is compared with the inductance
estimation method proposed in [30]. In order to estimate the
dq-axis inductances, the compared method proposed in [30]
requires the winding resistance and rotor flux to be known,
because the inductances are varying during current injection
due to magnetic saturation. The winding resistance and rotor
flux can be either their nominal values or estimated from other
methods. For simplicity, the compared method uses the
nominal values of winding resistance and rotor flux and
employs the RLS algorithm for inductance estimation. This is
to highlight that our approach can improve the performance of
inductance estimation by considering magnetic saturation. The
Fig. 11. d-axis inductance estimation results of the proposed approach. (a) At comparison results of inductance estimation are listed in Table
motor speed of 50 rpm. (b) At motor speed of 200 rpm. IV. It can be observed that the compared method is unable to
estimate the d-axis inductances at id=0, because the voltage
drop due to d-axis inductance is zero. Moreover, the rotor flux
is assumed to be accurate, but the real rotor flux may vary with
the increase of magnet temperature. Thus, the inductance
estimation is also affected by the accuracy of rotor flux.
Supposing that the rotor flux has a 1% estimation error, it will
cause an error of 6.7 mH to Ld estimation for id=-1 A, which is
nearly 30% of the nominal value. However, the proposed
method is able to estimate the d-axis inductance with respect to
the nominal value.
The estimated q-axis inductance at both 50 and 200 rpm is
close to that estimated with the proposed method, because the
q-axis inductance estimation is mainly affected by the winding
resistance and VSI nonlinearity. As discussed above, the VSI
nonlinearity has a negligible influence on q-axis inductance
Fig. 12. q-axis inductance estimation results of the proposed approach. (a) At estimation especially at high speed. Supposing that the winding
motor speed of 50 rpm. (b) At motor speed of 200 rpm. resistance has a 1% estimation error, it will result a 0.46 mH
estimation error at 50 rpm and 0.12 mH at 200 rpm to the q-axis
TABLE II: THE dq-AXIS INDUCTANCES OF THE INTERIOR PMSM AT DIFFERENT
dq -AXIS CURRENTS inductance estimation, which is also negligible, especially at
id iq Ld Lq high speed. However, the compared method requires the
5.8 A 4.5 A 29.7 mH 105.9 mH knowledge of the winding resistance and rotor flux, and these
7A 5.1 A 27.1 mH 93 mH values may vary with the rise of temperature, and thus the
TABLE III: THE ESTIMATED dq-AXIS INDUCTANCES OF THE PROPOSED METHOD accuracy of the compared method is limited.
Without Considering VSI Considering VSI
Nonlinearity (mH) Nonlinearity (mH)
VI. CONCLUSIONS
50 rpm 200 rpm 50 rpm 200 rpm
id iq Ld Lq Ld Lq Ld Lq Ld Lq A novel current injection based approach is developed and
0 5.2 A 27.5 98 26.5 96 30 98 28.2 96 validated for online estimation of the PMSM parameters and
-1 A 4.7 A 18.8 110 26 100 22.9 108 27.4 100 the VSI nonlinearity considering the magnetic saturation. A
-2 A 4.3 A 10 127 25.5 104.2 15.3 118 26.6 104 current compensation strategy is proposed to reduce the
TABLE IV: THE ESTIMATED dq-AXIS INDUCTANCES OF THE COMPARED AND influence of our approach on the drive performance. The DC
PROPOSED APPROACHES component based parameter estimation model considering VSI
Compared Method (mH) Proposed Approach (mH)
nonlinearity is proposed to eliminate the influence of rotor
50 rpm 200 rpm 50 rpm 200 rpm
id iq Ld Lq Ld Lq Ld Lq Ld Lq
position errors on parameter estimation. A linear magnetic
0 5.2 A 97.5 96 30 98 28.2 96 saturation model is employed to facilitate the inductance
-1 A 4.7 A 15.2 107 14.7 100 22.9 108 27.4 100 estimation. It has been demonstrated that the winding resistance
-2 A 4.3 A 6.3 120 10.2 105 15.3 118 26.6 104 can be accurately estimated at both low and high speed by
Obviously, the d-axis inductance estimation is significantly considering the VSI distorted voltage; the rotor flux and dq-axis
affected by the VSI nonlinearity. It can be concluded from these inductances can be accurately estimated with respect to the
analyses that the VSI nonlinearity induced q-axis inductance nominal values at high speed. The VSI nonlinearity has a great
estimation error is negligible as it only accounts for less than impact on the flux estimation at low speed, but its influence is
one percent of the nominal value, but the VSI nonlinearity negligible at high speed. The VSI nonlinearity has great impact
induced d-axis inductance estimation error is large especially at on the d-axis inductance estimation at both low and high speed,

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TTE.2016.2538180, IEEE
Transactions on Transportation Electrification
while its influence on the q-axis inductance estimation is
negligible at high speed. In addition, the proposed approach can
be incorporated into the control algorithm to improve the drive
performance for direct-drive EV applications, and it is
applicable to different PMSM drive systems.
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