Power electronics and motor drives-recent technology advances

Power electronics and motor drives constitute a vast, complex and interdisciplinary subject that has gone through rapid technological evolution during the last four decades. As the technology is advancing and apparatus cost is decreasing along with the improvement of reliability, their applications are expanding in industrial, commercial, residential, military, aerospace and utility environments. Many innovations in power semiconductor devices, converter topologies, analytical and simulation techniques, electrical machine drives, and control and estimation techniques are contributing to this advancement. The frontier of the technology has been further advanced by the artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as fuzzy logic and artificial neural networks, thus bringing more challenge to power electronic engineers. In the global industrial automation, energy generation, conservation and environmental pollution control trends of the 21^st Century, the widespread impact of power electronics is inevitable. In this paper, recent advances of power devices, converters, variable frequency drives, advanced control and estimation techniques are briefly reviewed.