Design and Application of Neural Network for Compensation of VSI Output Voltage Nonlinearities

Voltage source inverters (VSI) with modern power-switching elements are often used to control industrial AC motors. However, the non-linearities of the inverters, such as dead time, turn-on and turn-off switching delay times and voltage drops, are often behind the distortion of the phase currents of the controlled motor. The current distortions can be suppressed by appropriately calculated non-linear functions, which represent the compensation voltages and are consequently added to the control values of the current regulators in the field-oriented control (FOC) algorithm. An artificial neural network (ANN) was designed to identify the non-linear functions of the compensation voltages, which is presented in this paper. Only signals available in the FOC algorithm are used as ANN inputs. The learning process of the neural network takes place online during the running of the motor control algorithm. The learning pattern is generated in each step of the control algorithm from the control errors of the current controllers and the previous ANN outputs. It is not necessary to know the VSI parameters when learning the neural network. The proposed ANN and back-propagation learning algorithm were implemented on one core of the AURIX microcontroller TC397. The proposed strategy was validated through experiments on a real permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM), and experimental results prove the effectiveness of the ANN.