Evaluation of a new microcontroller based solution for sensorless control of electrical drives

Sensorless field oriented control has always been an area of study with many insecurities, parameter sensitivities and instabilities. In this paper, after giving a short overview of standard sensorless field oriented control algorithms, a new technology by Texas Instruments called “InstaSPIN” will be evaluated. InstaSPIN promises to solve all of the well-known problems of sensorless control as, weak low speed performance, restricted dynamic response and high parameter sensitivity. The performance will be compared with a standard drive based on a 5 kW permanent magnet synchronous machine.