Analysis of the Phase Current Measurement Boundary of Three Shunt Sensing PWM Inverters and an Expansion Method

To obtain phase currents information in AC drives, shunt sensing technology is known to show great performance in cost-effectiveness and therefore it is widely used in low cost applications. However, shunt sensing methods are unable to acquire phase currents in certain operation conditions. This paper deals with the derivation of the boundary conditions for phase current reconstruction in three-shunt sensing inverters and proposes a voltage injection method to expand the measurable areas. As the boundary conditions are deeply dependent on the switching patterns, they are typically analyzed on the voltage vector plane for space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) and discontinuous pulse width modulation (DPWM). In the proposed method, the voltage injection and its compensation are conducted within one sampling period. This guarantees fast current reconstruction and the injected voltage is decided so as to minimize the current ripple. In addition to the voltage injection method, a sampling point shifting method is also introduced to improve the boundary conditions. Simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the boundary condition derivation and the effectiveness of the proposed voltage injection method.