A Hall-sensor-based IPM traction motor drive

Due to the sinusoidal air gap flux waveform of interior permanent magnet (IPM) motors, an expensive encoder is usually required for the drive. In this paper, a robust and low cost hall-sensor-based rotor position signal synthesizer is first proposed for traction motor drives. Then, a double-band hysteresis current controller is adopted for the inverter to further reduce switching loss. Also, a digital signal processor, namely TI TMS320F240 is used to implement the speed controller. Experimental results show that, for common traction motor applications, the proposed IPM traction motor drive can satisfy the desired performance without using an expensive and delicate encoder.