Some suppliers of motor controls China Kelly Controls – www.kellycontroller.com GTAKE +86 755 86392601 www.gtake.com Germany Infineon Technologies +49 89 234 65555 www.infineon.com India Embitel +91 80 4169 4200 www.embitel.com UK Tektronix +44 1344 392 400 www.tek.com USA Bacancy +1 347 441 4161 www.bacancytechnology.com Curtis Instruments +1 914 666 2971 www.curtisinstruments.com Electromate +1 877 737 8698 www.electromate.com Matsusada Precision +1 704 496 2644 www.matsusada.com Sensata Technologies +1 508 236 3800 www.sensata.com STMicroelectronics +1 972 466 7775 www.st.com Texas Instruments +1 972 995 2011 www.ti.com E-Mobility Engineering | November/December 2023 41 Embedded oscilloscope Another advantage of using ML in a controller is the ability to tap into key remote monitoring and diagnostics. An embedded digital oscilloscope enables designers to diagnose what is occurring remotely, and then make adjustments in situ. This gives developers 12 channels and 160 Msamples/second with the ability to analyse the timings of the switching. Traces can be recorded and exported to see how the system is performing. This enables developers to understand what is happening in the motor control system so that actions can be taken. In the future, preventative maintenance programmes may be able to be implemented, using the feedback from the embedded oscilloscope in the motor controller. Although the idea of soft-switching is not new, it had not previously been possible to implement it in an inverter with continuously varying input and output conditions. Conclusion Creating the perfect sine wave is a key challenge for EV motor control. More techniques are being developed to improve the efficiency of the motors, and there are associated challenges for measuring the signals. New pulse width modulation schemes and multiple phase designs can boost the efficiency, but can be more complex and costly to implement. ML is being applied to the motor control signals to improve the motor efficiency above 99% while reducing the complexity of the inverter. The ML approach also enables an embedded oscilloscope to give a more detailed view of the signals and can even predict how the motor will behave. This can warn of problems elsewhere in the inverter and motor system as the signals fluctuate out of the expected range, predicting potential problems and enabling maintenance to be scheduled before a catastrophic inverter or motor failure. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Bruce Renouard and Jacek Borecki at Pre-Switch, Lee Miller at Tektronix, Mark Ankers at Curtis Instruments and George Lakkas at Texas Instruments for their help with researching this article. Block diagram of a vector control system (Courtesy of Tektronix)
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjI2Mzk4