Implementation of reactive power-based MRAS for sensorless speed control of brushless doubly fed reluctance motor drive

The present work introduces the concept of classical reactive power (Q)-based model reference adaptive system (MRAS) for the speed estimation and control of low-cost BDFR motor drive. The reasons behind such choice for this drive's control are: (i) MRAS-based controllers can inherently take care of the machine parameter variations which had been a challenging issue with the other available sensorless speed estimation strategies and (ii) the employment of Q as a functional candidate inevitably makes the formulation immune to the variations in stator resistance. The experimental assessment, in this respect, confirms these claims. Furthermore, the analytical validation of Popov's hyperstability criteria on the proposed controller, confirms the drive's overall stability within the investigated speed control range. The speed control performance is examined in MATLAB/Simulink. The simulation results are further validated by a real-time implementation using dSPACE-1103-based 1.6kW BDFR machine prototype.