Chinese Journal of Electrical Engineering, Vol.4, No.

2, June 2018

Performance Evaluation of Two-Vector-Based

Model Predictive Current Control of PMSM Drives
Yongchang Zhang1*, Lanlan Huang1, Donglin Xu1, Jiali Liu1, and Jialin Jin1
(1. Inverter Technologies Engineering Research Center of Beijing,
North China University of Technology, Beijing 100144, China)
Abstract: Conventional model predictive current control (MPCC) applies only one vector during
one control period, which produces large torque and flux ripples and high current harmonics in
permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives. Recently MPCC with duty cycle control has
been proposed to improve the steady state performance by applying one non-zero vector and one null
vector during one control period. However, the prior method requires lots of calculations and
predictions to find the optimal voltage vectors and calculate their respective duration. Different from
prior enumeration-based MPCC, this paper proposes an efficient two-vector MPCC by applying two
arbitrary voltage vectors during one control period. The reference voltage vector is firstly calculated
based on the principle of deadbeat current control. Two optimal vectors and their duration are then
obtained in a very efficient way, which does not require the calculation of current slopes in prior MPCC
methods. The proposed method is compared to the state-of-the-art predictive control methods,
including conventional MPCC, MPCC with duty cycle control, deadbeat control with space vector
modulation (SVM) and modulated model predictive control (M2PC). Both simulation and experimental
results prove that the proposed method achieves better steady state performance than conventional
MPCC with or without duty cycle and the dynamic response is not degraded. Under the condition of
insufficient dc bus voltage, the proposed method outperforms deadbeat control and M2PC by presenting
even higher speed range and less torque ripples.
Keywords: Predictive control, current control, PMSM drives.

cost function, which usually consists of torque and flux

1 Introduction
Direct torque control(DTC) and vector control(VC)
are two of the most popular high performance control
methods for electric drives[1]. Recently model predictive
control (MPC) has attracted widespread attention in both
academic and industrial communities due to its merits
of simple concept, quick response, ability to handle
nonlinear constraints and multi-variable control. So far,
MPC has been applied in the control of power
converters[2-10] and motor drives[11-21]. Compared to the
heuristic switching table in DTC, MPC is more accurate
and effective in the selection of voltage vectors because
the accurate model of system is taken into account.
Compared to VC, MPC achieves much quicker dynamic
response due to the elimination of PWM block and
current regulation. However, the steady state performance
of MPC is inferior to VC and still has to be improved.
Furthermore, although the basic concept of MPC is
simple and intuitive, it is computationally intensive due
to the enumeration-based predictions. Finally, MPC
suffers from the tuning work of weighing factor when
dealing with multi-variable control, due to the lack
of theoretical design procedure. Various improved
versions of conventional MPC have been proposed to
overcome the aforementioned drawbacks.
In conventional MPC for ac motor drives, the basic
idea is to predict the future behavior of machine and
select the best voltage vector minimizing a predefined
*Corresponding Author,E-mail:zyc@ncut.edu.cn.
errors[11-16], or current vector error[17-20]. For PMSM
drives, the current can be directly measured, while the
stator flux and torque are usually estimated using a
sophisticated estimator or observer, which complicates
the controller design. Furthermore, the problem of
weighting factor tuning, when selecting torque and
stator flux as the control variables is avoided. From the
view of practicality, taking current vector as the control
variable is more feasible and much easier to implement.
For two-level inverter-fed PMSM drives, the cost
function has to be evaluated seven times to obtain the
optimal voltage vector. To reduce the computational
burden, various simplified MPC methods have been
proposed to select the optimal voltage vector[22-24]. In
[22-23], it is show that the non-zero vector which is
closest to the current error vector caused by the zero
vector is the best non-zero vector. After a comparison
between the current error vector caused by the best
non-zero vector and zero vector, the final optimal vector
can be obtained. However, the principle in [22-23]
requires that the gains of the converter voltage vector in
the mathematical expression should be constant, which
usually involves the synchronous frame transformation.
In [24], the required voltage vector based on the
principle of deadbeat control is first calculated. The
voltage vector which is nearest to this required voltage
vector is selected as the optimal vector. It requires only
one prediction and one further comparison (judgment) in
[22-24], which is much simpler than conventional
enumeration-based MPC[2]. Furthermore, it has been
proven that these simplified versions of MPC are
 66 Chinese Journal of Electrical Engineering, Vol.4, No.2, June 2018

completely equivalent to conventional MPC[2] by limitations of the state-of-the-art predictive methods and
presenting very similar performance, as shown in is considered as another contribution of this paper.
[23-25]. Recently, the principle introduced in [22-24] is
further applied to PMSM drives[26-27]. In spite of the 2 Dynamic equations of PMSM
reduction in control complexity, they still present
relatively large torque ripples in PMSM drives because In this paper, a surface-mounted PMSM (SPMSM)
only one voltage vector is applied during one control is considered, having equal d-axis and q-axis inductance.
period and there are a limited number of voltage vectors For the proposed MPC, stationary frame is preferred to
in two-level inverter. avoid rotary coordinate transformation. The mathematical
To improve the steady state performance of model of a SPMSM in stationary frame is expressed
conventional MPC, various improved MPC methods using complex vectors as
have been proposed in literature by applying two or d s
three vectors during one control period. For example, in us  Rs is  (1)
dt
MPC with duty cycle control[4,18,26,28], both a non-zero
vector and a null vector are applied and the duration of  s  Ls is   r (2)
the non-zero vector can be obtained based on various
principles such as current error minimization[18,26] or 3
Te = p Im( s * is ) (3)
power error minimization[4,28]. At high speed range, it is 2
show in [12] that the combination of two non-zero
voltage vectors achieves even better steady state where  r   f e je is the rotor flux vector. Rs, Ls, f, s,
performance than the fixed combination of a non-zero us, is, e,  are stator resistance, synchronous inductance,
vector and a null vector. However, the increased number permanent magnet flux, stator flux vector, stator voltage
of vector combination poses high computational burden vector, stator current vector, electrical rotor angle
and increases the control complexity. Recently a universal and number of pole pairs, respectively; r  d e / dt is
multiple-vector-based MPC has been proposed for
electrical rotor speed.
induction motor drives[29]. The reference voltage vector
Substituting (2) into (1), the differentiation of stator
is first obtained based on deadbeat control and then
current can be expressed as
synthesized by SVM. The optimal vectors and vector
duration are reconstructed from SVM. Apart from the dis us  Rs is  jr r us  Rs is  e
two-vector-based MPC, applying three vectors (two   (4)
dt Ls Ls
non-zero vectors and one null vector) has also been
widely studied, such as deadbeat control with SVM[30], where e  jr r is the back electromotive force(EMF).
modulated MPC(M2PC)[31] , and others[32] . These To predict the stator current isk 1 at the next instant,
methods achieve much better steady state performance
than conventional MPCC. However, the performance of (4) should be discretized. In this paper, the sampling
these improved MPC methods in the over modulation frequency is 10kHz or higher. Hence, first order
range has not been studied and compared. discretization method is accurate enough. The stator
This paper proposes an efficient two-vector model current isk 1 at the next instant can be predicted from its
predictive current control(MPCC) strategy for high current value isk as
performance control of PMSM drives. It not only
combines the advantages of the prior methods in [12] Tsc k
isk 1  isk  (us  Rs isk  e k ) (5)
and [29] developed for IM drives, but also provides Ls
some distinguishable features. As wll, the huge
calculations and the use of weighting factor in [12] are where Tsc is the control period.
avoided. The optimal vectors and their duration are
directly obtained from the reference voltage vector 3 Conventional MPCC
without resorting to SVM as in [29]. Hence, the In conventional single-vector-based MPCC[2] with
proposed method can autonomously operate in the over one-step delay compensation[17,33], the optimal voltage
modulation range without any additional work. This vector is directly selected by minimizing a cost function,
feature has not been reported before and we consider which is usually expressed as
this as one of the main contributions of this paper. As
2
well, we present a comprehensive study on the J  isref  isk  2 s.t . us  u0 , u1…u6 , u7  (6)
performance comparison of the proposed method with
other predictive control methods, including conventional
where isref  (idref  j iqref )eje is the current reference in
MPCC[2,27], MPCC with duty cycle control[18,26], deadbeat
control with SVM[30] and M2PC[31]. The results prove stationary frame. It is possible to use 1-norm
that the proposed method achieves better steady state measurement of the cost function due to its simplicity.
performance verses conventional MPCC with or without However, the 1-norm cost function may lead to
duty cycle and even out-performs deadbeat control and performance deterioration and even instability of
M2PC in the high speed range when the dc bus voltage closed-loop system[34]. Hence, in this paper we use
is insufficient. The performance evaluation of various 2-norm cost function. A detailed discussion on the
MPC methods is helpful to identify the advantages and choice of norm can be found in [34], which is not further
 Y. Zhang et al.: Performance Evaluation of Two-Vector-Based Model Predictive Current Control of PMSM Drives
expanded as it is out of scope of this paper.
As there are eight switching states (including two
null vectors) in a two-level inverter, the cost function in
(6) has to be evaluated seven times to find the optimal
voltage vector, which is computationally intensive.
Furthermore, as only one voltage vector is applied
during one control period, it leads to relatively high
steady state torque ripples and rich current harmonics.
To improve the steady state performance of
conventional MPCC, a zero vector is introduced in
combination with a non-zero vector during one control
period[18,26]. The optimal non-zero vector is selected
among the six non-zero voltage vectors by minimizing
the cost function (6). The duration of the optimal
non-zero vector is designed such that the current error at
the end of control period is minimal. More specifically,
the current at the end of control period can be expressed
as[18]:
isk  2  isk 1  s1  topt  s0  (Tsc  topt )
where s0 and s1 are the current slopes caused by a
zero vector u0 and the best non-zero voltage vector uopt
minimizing (6), which can be easily obtained from (4);
topt is the optimal duration of the best non-zero vector
uopt.
Substituting (7) into (6), the cost function becomes a
quadratic function of optimal vector duration topt for uopt,
which is composed of the  and  components in the
stationary frame. It is generally impossible to make both
components of (6) zero. However, we can obtain
minimum value of (6) by solving J / topt  0 . The
resulting optimal value of topt is [18]
(isref  isk 1  s0Tsc )  ( s1  s0 )
topt 
2
s1  s0
where  means dot product of two complex vectors. It
should be noted that the value of topt is saturated to zero
if topt is negative, or Tsc if topt is greater than Tsc.
4 Proposed MPCC
The control diagram of the proposed MPC is shown
in Fig.1. The q-axis current reference iqref is generated q
by an outer speed control loop using a PI controller and
the d-axis current reference idref is set to zero to d
achieve maximum-torque-per-ampere (MTPA) operation
for a SPMSM in this paper. The final current reference
vector is transformed into stationary frame. A reference
voltage vector usref calculated from the reference value
Fig.1 Control diagram of the proposed MPC
67
and feedback value of stator current, which serves as the
input of vector selection block. It should be noted that
the predicted stator current at (k+1)th instant is used
rather than the measured current at kth instant to
compensate the one-step digital delay. After deciding the
two optimal voltage vectors and their optimal duration, a
pulse generation block is used to generate the final
gating pulses. The details of each block in the proposed
MPCC are elaborated in the following text.
4.1 Reference voltage vector calculation
The theoretical minimal value of cost function (6)
for conventional MPCC is zero, if the voltage vector is
not limited to the seven basic voltage vectors. Based on
the principle of deadbeat current control, a simplified
MPC was proposed in [24] which calculates the required
voltage vector reference to nullify the current error at
k+1 instant. The basic voltage vector closest to this
(7) required voltage vector is selected as the best voltage
vector. This kind of vector selection strategy is more
efficient than the enumeration-based predictions by
requiring only one calculation and it has been verified in
a PMSM drive[27]. This paper utilizes the principle
introduced in [24, 27], first deriving the reference
voltage vector based on the principle of deadbeat current
control. However, the steady state performance is
significantly improved by using two voltage vectors
rather than one voltage vector during one control period
to approximate the reference voltage vector. Furthermore,
a high order estimator is introduced to achieve accurate
estimation of back EMF, which improves the robustness
against parameter variations significantly compared to
the first order back EMF estimation in conventional
method[2].
(8) In digital implementation, the one-step delay
caused by the updating mechanism of modern DSPs
should be compensated to mitigate its negative influence.
This means that we should use the stator current at k+1
instant to derive the reference voltage vector. From (4) it
is seen that the prediction of stator current requires the
knowledge of back EMF, which requires the information
of rotor speed, permanent magnet flux and rotor position.
To alleviate the dependence on machine parameters, in
this paper the EMF will be estimated from the stator
voltage and current. As the mechanical time constant of
PMSM is much larger than the electromagnetic time
constant, we can assume that the rotor speed is constant
during several successive control periods, which means
that e k  e k 1  e k  2 .
By applying bi-linear transformation to (4) from
k1 instant to k instant, the EMF at k instant can be
estimated as:
isk  isk 1 L k k 1
e k 1  usk 1  Rs  (is  is ) (9)
2 Tsc
Similarly, the EMF at ( k−2)th instant and (k−3)th
instant can be estimated as:
isk 1  isk  2 L k 1 k  2
e k  2  usk  2  Rs  (is  is ) (10)
2 Tsc
 68 Chinese Journal of Electrical Engineering, Vol.4, No.2, June 2018
isk  2  isk 1 L k  2 k 3
e k 3  usk 3  Rs  (is  is )
2 Tsc
The final estimated value of e k is obtained as a
mean value of the past EMF, which is expressed as
e k 1  e k  2  e k 3
ek 
3 should reach the reference value. As a result, the final
It should be noted that the EMF estimator in this
paper does use some machine parameters, but it avoids
the use of permanent magnet, rotor speed and rotor
position. To confirm the parameter robustness of the
EMF estimator, the steady state responses of the
proposed two-vector-based MPC in this paper with
parameter mismatches are simulated in Fig.2, where
both the stator resistance and permanent flux are
increased or decreased by 50% compared to their actual
value. It is found that the influence of parameter
variations on the steady state performance is insignificant.
To achieve further improvement on the robustness
against uncertainties such as noise disturbances and
model errors, the disturbance observer can be used as
shown in [30,35]. More details regarding the EMF
estimator and disturbance observer can be found in [36]
and [30,35], which are not further expanded as they are
out of the scope of this paper.
As the EMF in the past three consecutive periods
is used, the inverter nonlinearity such as dead time
and semiconductor voltage drop may influence the
estimation accuracy. In this paper, the dead time for the
inverter is 3s and the semiconductor voltage drop is 2V,
which are relatively small compared to the 100s
control period and 540V DC bus voltage. Hence, the
dead time and semiconductor voltage drop would not
produce significant performance deterioration but would
be better if the influence of dead time was compensated.
However, the compensation of inverter nonlinearity is
out of scope for this paper and more discussion on this
topic can refer to [37-38].
After obtaining the back EMF, the stator current at
k+1 instant can be predicted from (5). By shifting the
Fig.2 Simulated steady state response of the proposed
two-vector based MPC at rated speed with mismatched
machine parameters
time in (5) from k+1 instant to k+2 instant, the voltage
(11) vector applied from k+1 to k+2 instant can be obtained
as:
i k  2  isk 1
usk +1 =Rs isk 1  Ls s  ek (13)
Tsc
In deadbeat control, the current at k+2 instant
(12)
reference uref
s voltage vector nullifying the current error
at the s end of next control period is calculated as
isref  isk 1
usref =Rs isk 1  Ls  ek (14)
Tsc
where e k the estimated back EMF from (12).
4.2 Vector selection
After obtaining the reference voltage vector
according to the principle in Section 4.1, the remaining
work is to decide the optimal voltage vectors and their
duration. For two-level inverter, there are six non-zero
voltage vectors and two zero voltage vectors, as shown
in Fig.3a. The complex plane is divided into six sectors
(S1 to S6) and the six non-zero voltage vectors are
located in the bisector of each sector. When the
reference voltage vector is located in sector S1, from
Fig.3a it is evident that u1 is the nearest nonzero voltage
vector pointing toward usref. As u1 produces minimal
voltage error amplitude than any other non-zero voltage
vector, it is selected as the first optimal voltage vector.
From the analysis above, it is concluded that the first
(a) First vector
(b) Second vector
Fig.3 Principle of vector selection for 2 vectors
 Y. Zhang et al.: Performance Evaluation of Two-Vector-Based Model Predictive Current Control of PMSM Drives
voltage vector is dependent on which sector the
reference voltage vector is located.
Generally, if uref
s in sector Sn(n =1,2,...,6), the first
vector should be un. The specific formula to identify the
ref locating sector of uref
s is:
 
sn  floor usref  / 1 (15)
6 3
It is seen that the sector is only related to the angle
information of uref s .
It should be noted that for the selection of the first
vector, only the non-zero vectors are considered because
the zero vectors will be considered in the selection of the
second vector. If the first vector is applied during the
whole control period, the method becomes conventional
single-vector-based MPC[24,27].
To further improve the steady state performance,
this paper proposes a new method for the second
vector selection. Different from prior two-vector-based
MPC[18,26], the second vector is not necessarily a zero
vector but possibly a non-zero vector. To avoid a large
increase in the switching frequency and the complexity
of control, the second candidate vector is selected in
such a way that no more than one switching jumps is
allowed during one control period. This means that if the
first vector is ui (i=1,2,...,6), the second vector is selected
from two adjacent non-zero vectors ui 1, ui +1 and zero
vector u0,7. For example, if the first voltage vector is
selected as u1(100), the second voltage vector should be
selected among u2(110), u6(101) and u0(000). To obtain
the best second voltage vector from the three candidate
vectors, this paper proposes an efficient method by
analyzing the minimal distance between the reference
voltage vector and the candidate voltage vector
combinations, as shown in Fig.3b.
Firstly, it will be shown that applying a zero vector
in combination with the first optimal vector is better
than applying the first optimal vector only. For example,
under the assumption that the reference voltage vector
located in the first sector (S1), the first optimal voltage
vector uref s would be u1 and the error distance between
us an u1 is | eu1 | usref  u1 . If both u1 and u0 are applied,
ref
the minimal distance between uref s and (u1,u0) is
| d 0 || eu1 ,u0 | =uref
s  u t
1 opt as shown in Fig.3b, where topt
is the optimal duration of u1. It is evident that
| d0 || eu1 ,u0 | is smaller than | eu1 | , because d 0 is
perpendicular to the vector u1. Similarly, |d0| is also
smaller than the error distance caused by the zero vector
u0. This proves that using a combination of non-zero
vector and zero vector during one control period would
produce less error than using one voltage vector only, as
confirmed in [18].
Secondly, we will demonstrate that in some regions
the combination of two non-zero vectors is better than
the combination of one non-zero vector and one zero
vector. In Fig.3b, the fist sector is divided into 3 regions:
R0 (in brown color), R1 (in green color) and R2 (in ref
yellow color), and the reference voltage vector uref s
located in R2. As region R2 lies below the angle bisector
( ＞ ), the minimal distance d2 caused by (u1,u6) is 6
69
smaller than d0 caused by (u1,u0). Hence, in region R2 of
sector S1, the best second vector is u6 and the optimal
voltage vector combination is (u1,u6). In a similar way,
ref it can be concluded that if uref
s in region R1, the s best
second vector is u2 and the optimal voltage vector
combination is (u1,u2). The prior MPC with duty cycle
control[18,26] selects the fixed vector combination of ref
(u1,u0) in the first sector, which is only optimal if us is
located in region R0.
From the analysis above, an efficient method to
identify the region of uref ref
s is proposed. If us is in region
ref
R0, the angle of vector us u1 would be with in the range
 
of (  ， ). In other words, the condition of urefs locating
6 6
in region R0 is that the following formula should be true:
3 Im(usref  u1 ) ＜ Re(usref  u1 ) (16)
Otherwise, if the imaginary component of uref s u1 is
bigger than zero, urefs is in region R1 and the best vector
combination is (u1,u2). If not, the reference voltage
vector is located in region R2 and the optimal vector
combination is (u1,u6).
To elaborate the process of vector selection more
clearly, the procedure to select the two optimal voltage
vectors of the proposed method can be summarized in
the following steps:
(1) Calculate the reference voltage vector according
to (14).
(2) Identify the locating sector Sn of the reference
voltage vector according to (15) and determine the first
optimal vector un .
(3) The second optimal vector is u0,7 if the equation
(16) is true where u1 should be replaced by un .
Otherwise
1) if Im(uref
s un )＞0 the second optimal vector is
un +1.
2) otherwise the second optimal vector is un 1.
The optimal vector combination in the whole
complex plane is illustrated in Fig.4. It is clearly seen
that when the reference voltage vector is near the border
of hexagon (blue area in Fig.4, corresponding to high
modulation index), the two optimal vectors are both
non-zero vectors. In other areas of the complex plane
(gray area), the two optimal vectors are one non-zero
vector and one null vector.
Fig.4 Optimal vector selection in the whole complex
plane for the proposed two-vector MPCC
 70 Chinese Journal of Electrical Engineering, Vol.4, No.2, June 2018
4.3 Vector duration
Assuming that the reference voltage vector urefs is in
sector Sx, the first vector is ux, the second vector is uy
and the optimal vector duration of ux is topt, the distance
between the reference voltage vector and the equivalent
vector synthesized by (ux, uy) is:
topt  topt 
G  usref  u x  1   uy (17)
Tsc
 Tsc 
To obtain minimal voltage error amplitude, the
value of G should be minimized, which is equivalent to
solving the following formula:
2
topt  topt   ref k 1 Rs isk 1
usref  u x  1   uy  min (18)
Tsc  Tsc
 =
The optimal duration of ux can be obtained in a similar
way to (8) by solving G 2 / topt  0 , which is expressed
as:
(usref  u y )  (u x  u y )
topt  Tsc (19)
2
ux  u y
It should be noted that the value of topt is saturated to
zero if topt is negative, or Tsc if topt is greater than Tsc.
After obtaining the optimal vector selection and
vector duration, the switching pulses can be generated
according to the selected vectors. This can be easily
implemented in modern DSPs and will not be detailed in
this paper.
4.4 Comparison of the proposed method and prior
methods
The proposed method has noticeable differences when
compared to prior MPC with duty cycle control[12,18,26].
For one, it converts the current control into voltage
control, which is achieved based on the principle of
deadbeat control. This requires only a few calculations
and avoids the time-consuming enumeration based
predictions. As well, in the proposed method we present
an efficient way to select the two optimal voltage
vectors. The first vector is only determined by the
locating sector and the second vector is only related to
the small regions in one sector, as shown in Fig.3b. As
both prior methods and the proposed method try to
minimize the current error at the end of next control
period, it will be shown in this paper that the proposed
method has an inherent relationship to prior methods.
The proposed method tries to minimize the voltage
error, which can be obtained by subtracting (13) from
(14) as:
2 2
J1 = usref  usk 1  k isref  isk  2 (20)
where k  ( Ls / Tsc ) 2 It is clearly seen that the voltage
vector error in (20) is proportional to the current error in
(6). This proves that the voltage vector error minimization
based on deadbeat current control in the proposed
method is essentially the same as prior MPCC methods
in terms of cost function.
Apart from the same cost function for the proposed
method and prior MPCC methods, it will be shown that
the optimal vector duration of the proposed method and
prior methods are also the same. Taking MPCC with
duty cycle control[18] as an example, if the first optimal
voltage vector is uopt, the optimal vector duration in (8)
can be further simplified from (4) and (14) as:
uopt
(isref  isk 1  s0Tsc ) 
Ls
topt  2
uopt
Ls
 uopt
 is  is  Tsc  

Ls Ls
2

uopt
Ls
Tsc  k 1 Ls ref k 1  uopt
 Rs is  (is  is )  e k  
Ls  Tsc  Ls
 2
uopt
Ls
usref  uopt
 Tsc (21)
uopt
2
It is seen that the optimal vector duration in (21) is
a special case of the optimal vector duration in (19) of
the proposed method, where the first optimal voltage
vector is uopt and the second vector is fixed to a zero
vector. This clearly shows that the proposed method is a
generalization of the prior method[18] but it is much
simpler in principle and easier to implement.
As shown in the introduction, there are many
three-vector-based predictive control methods which
apply two non-zero vectors and one null vector during
one control period[30-32]. For example, the deadbeat
control with SVM[30] is able to generate the reference
voltage vector accurately during one control period in
the linear range. The proposed method only minimizes
rather than nullifies the voltage vector error as in the
deadbeat control with SVM. Hence, its steady state
performance would surely not be better than that of
deadbeat control. However, the error minimization
rather than error elimination provides additional
freedom to consider other constraints and control aims
such as common mode voltage reduction. On the
contrary, in deadbeat control there is no additional
freedom to consider other control aims. Hence, the
proposed two-vector-based MPC has the potential to
maintain the features of conventional MPC. However, as
this is not the focus of this paper, it is not further
expanded.
Furthermore, so far the three-vector-based predictive
control is mainly studied in the linear range, where the
dc bus voltage is sufficient. In the over modulation range
where the dc bus voltage is insufficient, the proposed
method is still able to minimize the voltage vector error,
 Y. Zhang et al.: Performance Evaluation of Two-Vector-Based Model Predictive Current Control of PMSM Drives 71

hence achieving higher speed range with lower torque

ripples than deadbeat control. On the contrary, the
deadbeat control fails to exactly synthesize the reference
voltage vector and the machine has lower speed range,
as shown in the experimental results in Section VI-D.

5 Simulation study
5.1 Comparison with FCS-MPC and MPC with duty
cycle using the same sampling frequency
The proposed MPC is simulated in the environment
of Matlab/Simulink. The results obtained from conven-
tional finite-control-set MPC (FCS-MPC)[2,27] and MPC
with duty cycle control[18,26] are also presented for the
purpose of comparison. The machine and control (a) Low speed operation of 75r/min with 100% rated torque
parameters are listed in Table 1. The sampling frequencies
for each method are 10kHz unless explicitly indicated.
Fig.5 illustrates the simulated steady state responses
of stator flux, torque and one-phase stator current when
switching from FCS-MPC to MPC with duty cycle
control and the proposed MPC. As these control
methods are implemented in one frame, it is easy to
implement the switching from one method to another
method at any specific time by enabling another method
in the next control cycle. The MPC with duty cycle
control is enabled at t =0.4s and the proposed MPC is
enabled at t =0.8s. It is clearly seen that by introducing
two vectors during one control period, much better
steady state performance than conventional FCS-MPC is
obtained. It should be noted that, at low speeds, the
performance difference between MPC with duty cycle (b) High speed operation of 1500r/min with 100% rated torque
control and the proposed MPC is insignificant, as shown Fig.5 Simulated steady state responses of stator flux,
in Fig.5a. This is reasonable as the reference voltage torque and stator current when switching from FCS-MPC
vector has very low amplitude at low speeds and is to MPC with duty cycle control and the proposed MPC
located in region R0 of each sector. Hence, the optimal
combination at low speeds is a non-zero vector and a
zero vector. This is further confirmed by the simulation
results shown in Fig.6a, where the selected first vector
and second vector are almost the same for the MPC with
duty cycle control and the proposed MPC.
However, at high speeds, the reference voltage
vector is much larger due to the high back EMF caused
by the high speed and it falls to region R1 and R2 very
often. As a result, the optimal combination at high
speeds becomes two non-zero vectors as shown in
Fig.6b. This is confirmed by the simulation results at
100% rated speed shown in Fig.5b, where the proposed (a) Low speed operation of 75r/min with 100% rated torque
MPC exhibits the best steady state performance in terms
of torque/flux ripples and current harmonics.
Table 1 Machine and control parameters
Parameters Value
DC-bus voltage Udc/V 540
Rated power P N /kW 2.4
Rated voltage U N /V 380
Rated frequency f N /Hz 100
Rated torque T N /(N·m) 10
Number of pole pairs N p 4
Stator resistance Rs/ 2.2479
d-axis inductance Ld /mH 17.65
q-axis inductance Lq/mH 17.65 (b) High speed operation of 1500r/min with 100% rated torque
Permanent magnet flux f / Wb 0.4686 Fig.6 Simulated selected voltage vectors when switching from
Sampling period Tsc/s 100 FCSMPC to MPC with duty cycle control and the proposed MPC
 72 Chinese Journal of Electrical Engineering, Vol.4, No.2, June 2018

Fig.7 shows the quantitative comparison of current

THD, torque ripple, flux ripple and average switching
frequency at various speeds for the FCS-MPC, MPC
with duty cycle control and the proposed MPC with 100%
rated torque. It is seen that, with the same sampling
frequency of 10kHz, the conventional FCS-MPC has the
lowest average switching frequency, but presents the
highest current THD and torque/flux ripples. Both MPC
with duty cycle control and the proposed MPC present
much better steady state performance than that of
conventional MPC, however, at the cost of much higher
switching frequency. The performance of MPC with
duty cycle control and the proposed MPC are very
similar to each other at low and medium speeds as they
both select the same voltage vectors. However, at high
speed of 1500 r/min, it is seen that the proposed MPC
achieves the better steady state performance while its
average switching frequency is even lower than that of
MPC with duty cycle control. This proves that at high
speeds, the proposed MPC is more effective than MPC
with duty cycle control by selecting two non-zero
voltage vectors.
5.2 Comparison with FCS-MPC and MPC with duty
cycle using the same sampling frequency
At the same sampling frequency, both MPC with
duty cycle control and the proposed MPC present much
better steady state performance than conventional FCS-
MPC. However, their average switching frequencies are
also much higher than that of conventional MPC. To
achieve a fair comparison of the three MPC methods,
they should be carried out under the condition of the
same switching frequency. As the switching frequency
of FCS-MPC varies significantly with the speed, we use
the switching frequency of FCS-MPC as a benchmark.
The average switching frequency of FCS-MPC with
20kHz sampling frequency at 150r/min is 1.65kHz
(according to the test results in Fig.16), so we use
1.65kHz as a standard. The average switching frequency
is obtained by counting the total switching jumps of six
legs of two-level inverter over a fixed period of 0.05s.

Fig.8 Simulated steady state responses for the FCS-MPC,

MPC with duty cycle control and the proposed MPC with
100% rated torque under the condition of the same 1.65kHz
average switching frequency at various speeds

It can be clearly seen that at the same switching

Fig.7 Simulated quantitative comparison of simulated current
THD, torque ripple, flux ripple and average switching frequency
at various speeds for the FCS-MPC, MPC with duty cycle
control and the proposed MPC with 100% rated torque under
the condition of the same 10kHz sampling frequency
frequency, the torque ripples of the proposed MPC and
MPC with duty cycle control are also lower than that of
FCS-MPC, especially at low and medium speeds. The
overall performance of the proposed MPC is better than
the other two MPC methods, confirming the superiority
of the proposed MPC under the condition of the same
switching frequency.
 Y. Zhang et al.: Performance Evaluation of Two-Vector-Based Model Predictive Current Control of PMSM Drives
A quantitative comparison of the three MPC
methods in terms of current THD, torque ripple, flux
ripple and sampling frequency is illustrated in Fig.9. It is
seen that to achieve the same switching frequency, the
sampling frequency of the FCS-MPC has to be very high,
which poses high requirements on the hardware. For
example, the sampling frequencies at 1500r/min for
FCS-MPC, MPC with duty cycle control and the
proposed MPC are 12kHz, 4.2kHz and 5kHz, respectively.
In spite of the high sampling frequency, the steady state
performance of FCS-MPC is still inferior to two-
vectors-based MPC, especially when the speed is low.
At medium and high speeds, the performance of the
proposed MPC is still much better than that of
convectional MPC and MPC with duty cycle control.
This proves that using two vectors during one control
period is more practical to improve performance at
steady state than simply increasing the sampling
frequency of conventional FCS-MPC or using fixed
vector combination during one control period.
6 Experimental results
Apart from the simulation study, the proposed MPC
is experimentally tested on a two-level inverter-fed
PMSM drive, where the experimental setup is illustrated
in Fig.10. The results obtained from conventional FCS-
MPC[2,27], MPC with duty cycle control[18,26], deadbeat
control with SVM[30] and M2PC[31] are also presented for
the purpose of comparison. A 32-bit floating point DSP
TMS320F28335 is employed to implement the control
algorithms in this paper. The execution time of
conventional FCS-MPC, MPC with duty cycle control
and the proposed MPC are 44.5s, 85.9s and 45.5s,
respectively. It is evident that the proposed method has
much lower calculation time compared to the MPC with
duty cycle control, which is only slightly higher than
that of FCS-MPC. The calculation time clearly confirms
the effectiveness of the proposed method in reducing
computational burden. A three-phase intelligent power
module equipped with insulated-gate bipolar transistor is
used for an inverter. The gating pulses are generated in
the DSP control board and then sent to the inverter. The
Fig.9 Simulated quantitative comparison of simulated current
THD, torque ripple, flux ripple and sampling frequency at
various speeds for the FCS-MPC, MPC with duty cycle control
and the proposed MPC with 100% rated torque under the
condition of the same 1.65kHz average switching frequency
73
Fig.10 The experimental setup of a two-level
inverter-fed PMSM drive
load is applied using a magnetic powder brake. A 2500-
pulse incremental encoder is equipped to obtain the rotor
speed. The machine and control parameters are the same
as those listed in Table 1. During the experimental
process, all variables are displayed and recorded on a
digital oscilloscope via on-board DA converter except
the stator current which is directly measured using a
current probe. These data are further transferred to PC
for plotting and analysis using Matlab.
6.1 Comparison with FCS-MPC and MPC with duty
cycle using the same sampling frequency
Similar to Fig.5, the steady state performance of
the three MPC methods at various speeds are first
investigated under the condition of the same 10kHz
sampling frequency, as shown in Fig.11. From top to
bottom, the curves shown in Fig.11 are rotor speed,
electromagnetic torque, stator flux amplitude and
one-phase stator current. The system is first operated
using conventional FCS-MPC and then switched to
MPC with duty cycle control and the proposed MPC.
It is clearly seen that conventional FCS-MPC presents
much higher torque ripples and current harmonics
than the other two methods. On the contrary, by
introducing two vectors during one control period, the
torque ripples and current harmonics are greatly
reduced in MPC with duty cycle control and the
proposed MPC, especially in the low speed range.
It should be noted that, the performance difference
between MPC with duty cycle control and the proposed
MPC is insignificant at low and medium speeds, which
is in accordance to the simulation results in Fig.5. This
means that at low speeds the optimal vector combination
is a non-zero vector and a zero vector. However at high
speeds, the optimal vector combination is usually two
non-zero vectors, as illustrated in Fig.6. Hence, the
performance improvement of the proposed MPC is
especially significant when the speed is high, as shown
in Fig.11 and confirmed by the quantitative comparison
in Fig.12. It is seen that the proposed MPC has the
lowest torque ripple and its current THD is also much
lower than that of conventional FCS-MPC and MPC
with duty cycle control. The results clearly indicate that
the proposed MPC is very effective in reducing current
harmonics and torque ripples by presenting even better
steady state performance than MPC with duty cycle
control, especially in the high speed range.
 74 Chinese Journal of Electrical Engineering, Vol.4, No.2, June 2018
(a) 150r/min with 100% rated torque
(b) 750r/min with 100% rated torque
(c) 1500r/min with 100% rated torque
Fig.11 Experimental results of rotor speed, torque, stator
flux and stator current under the condition of the same
10kHz sampling frequency when switching from FCS-MPC
to MPC with duty cycle control and the proposed MPC
Fig.12 Quantitative comparison of measured current THD,
torque ripple, flux ripple and average switching frequency
at various speeds for the FCS-MPC, MPC with duty cycle
control and the proposed MPC with 100% rated torque
under the condition of the same 10kHz sampling frequency
6.2 Comparison with FCS-MPC and MPC with duty
cycle using the same switching frequency
As shown in Fig.12, at the same sampling frequency
of 10kHz, conventional FCS-MPC has the lowest average
switch ing fr equ ency, wh ich is unf air fo r the
comparison. In this paper, the steady state performance
of three MPC methods with the same switching
frequency is also tested. Figs.13 to 15 present the steady
state performance of three MPC methods at low,
medium and high speeds with the same average
switching frequency of 1.65kHz. From top to bottom,
the curves shown in Figs.13 to 15 are rotor speed,
electromagnetic torque, stator flux amplitude and
one-phase stator current. It is clearly seen that, the
torque ripples of conventional MPC are still much
higher than those of MPC with duty cycle control and
the proposed MPC, especially in the low speed range.
(a) FCS-MPC
(b) MPC with duty cycle control
(c) The proposed MPC
Fig.13 Steady state responses at low speed operation of
150r/min with rated torque under the condition of the same
1.65kHz average switching frequency
 Y. Zhang et al.: Performance Evaluation of Two-Vector-Based Model Predictive Current Control of PMSM Drives
This proves that the two-vectors based MPC is still
effective in achieving better steady state performance
even under the condition of the same switching
frequency as conventional MPC.
(a) FCS-MPC
(b) MPC with duty cycle control,
(c) The proposed MPC
Fig.14 Steady state responses at medium speed operation
of 750r/min with rated torque under the condition of the
same 1.65kHz average switching frequency
(a) FCS-MPC
75
(b) MPC with duty cycle control
(c) The proposed MPC
Fig.15 Steady state responses at high speed operation of
1500r/min with rated torque under the condition of the same
1.65kHz average switching frequency
A quantitative comparison of the three MPC
methods in terms of current THD, torque ripple, flux
ripple and sampling frequency is illustrated in Fig.16. It
is seen that the proposed MPC presents the best overall
steady state performance at various speeds. At medium
and high speeds, the difference in the current THD
of conventional MPC and the proposed MPC is
insignificant. However, at high speed, the current THD
and stator flux ripples of MPC with duty cycle control
are even higher than either two MPC methods. The main
reason is that the combination of a non-zero vector and a
zero vector at high speed is not optimal. Furthermore,
this fixed combination has limited output ability and
easily enters the saturation region where the optimal
duration of the nonzero vector is saturated to zero or the
control period. On the contrary, the proposed MPC has
higher output ability, so its effectiveness in improving
the steady state performance is maintained at all speeds.
Conventional MPC has to use very high sampling
frequency to achieve the same switching frequency as
the two-vectors-based MPC methods, which increases the
hardware requirements. As the steady state performance
of FCS-MPC is still inferior to two-vectors-based MPC
at low and medium speeds, the proposed MPC is still of
practical value in improving the steady state performance
of conventional MPC.
6.3 Performance evaluation of dynamic response
Apart from the steady state performance comparison,
the dynamic performance of the three MPC methods is
also investigated. As the switching frequency is variable
during the dynamic process and a detailed steady state
 76 Chinese Journal of Electrical Engineering, Vol.4, No.2, June 2018

Fig.17 Starting from standstill to rated speed of 1500r/min

Fig.16 Quantitative comparison of measured current THD,

torque ripple, flux ripple and sampling frequency at various
speeds for the FCS-MPC, MPC with duty cycle control and
the proposed MPC with 100% rated torque under the condition
of the same 1.65kHz average switching frequency

performance comparison among each MPC method

under the same switching frequency has been studied in
Section 6.2, in this part we will use the same 10kHz
sampling frequency for each method for the aim of
simplicity. Fig.17 presents the starting response from
standstill to rated speed for the three MPC methods.
Very similar dynamic response for each method can be (a) FCS-MPC
observed, which confirms that the proposed MPC can
achieve quick dynamic response similar to conventional
MPC and MPC with duty cycle control while the steady
state performance is much better. Similar results can be
obtained during the speed reversal (from forward to
reverse), as shown in Fig.18. It is clearly seen that
decoupled control of torque and stator flux is achieved
during the dynamic process. The results again confirm
the good dynamic performance of the proposed MPC.

(b) MPC with duty cycle control

(c) The proposed MPC

Fig.18 Responses of speed reversal

A short time response of torque for stepped change

in the torque reference for the three MPC methods is
illustrated in Fig.19. It is seen that very quick dynamic
response can be observed in the three methods, taking
less than only 2ms for the torque to reach 150% rated
value. There is very insignificant difference among the
three MPC methods. This proves that the two-vectors
 Y. Zhang et al.: Performance Evaluation of Two-Vector-Based Model Predictive Current Control of PMSM Drives
Fig.19 Short time response of torque for stepped change
in torque reference
based MPC can achieve the same dynamic response
as conventional FCS-MPC while the steady state
performance is much better.
Finally, the dynamic responses to stepped change in
load torque are presented in Fig.20, where the machine
runs at 750r/min and then an external load torque is
suddenly applied to the machine using a magnetic powder
brake. There is only a small drop in the rotor speed and
then the motor speed recovers to its original reference
speed quickly. During the dynamic response, the stator
flux amplitude maintains constant and decoupled control
of torque and stator flux is achieved. Again, very similar
dynamic response can be observed in the three MPC
methods, but the MPC with duty cycle control and the
proposed MPC present much better steady state
performance than conventional FCS-MPC in terms of
torque ripple and current harmonics. The results validate
the good dynamic performance of the proposed MPC.
(a) FCS-MPC
(b) MPC with duty cycle control
77
(c) The proposed MPC
Fig.20 Dynamic responses to stepped change in
load torque at 750r/min
6.4 Comparison with deadbeat control and M2PC
The proposed method is compared with deadbeat
control and M2PC using the same sampling frequency of
10kHz. Fig.21~Fig.23 illustrate the steady state responses
for the three predictive methods at low, medium and
high speeds respectively. It is seen that deadbeat control
exhibits the best steady state performance, followed by
the proposed method and modulated MPC respectively.
However, the performance difference among the three
methods is negligible. A quantitative comparison of the
three methods in terms of current THD, torque ripples,
flux ripples and average switching frequency is
illustrated in Fig.24. It is seen that although the steady
state performance of the propose method is lower than
that of deadbeat control, its average switching frequency
is less than half of the other two methods. Hence, the
proposed method has lower switching loss, which is
beneficial to the system efficiency.
(a) The proposed MPC
(b) Deadbeat control with SVM
 78 Chinese Journal of Electrical Engineering, Vol.4, No.2, June 2018

(c) M2PC
Fig.21 Steady state responses at low speed operation of
150r/min with rated torque under the condition of the same
10kHz sampling frequency

(a) The proposed MPC

Fig.23 Steady state responses at high speed operation of

1500r/min with rated torque under the condition of the
same 10kHz sampling frequency

(b) Deadbeat control with SVM,

(c) M2PC Fig.24 Quantitative comparison of current THD for the

Fig.22 Steady state responses at medium speed operation proposed MPC, deadbeat control and M2PC with 100%
of 750r/min with rated torque under the condition of the rated torque under the condition of the same 10kHz
same 10kHz sampling frequency sampling frequency
 Y. Zhang et al.: Performance Evaluation of Two-Vector-Based Model Predictive Current Control of PMSM Drives
In normal condition where the DC bus voltage is
sufficient, the deadbeat control can accurately synthesize
the reference voltage vector as required, hence producing
better steady state performance than the proposed method.
However, when the dc bus voltage is low, the deadbeat
control cannot output the required voltage vector. In this
case, the proposed method performs better by minimizing
the voltage vector error. As shown in Fig.25, when the dc
bus voltage is reduced from 540V to 510V, the proposed
method can still work at rated speed of 1500r/min with
75% rated torque. On the contrary, the rotor speed is
reduced to 1440r/min in deadbeat control under the same
condition and the torque ripples are greatly increased.
For M2PC, the rotor speed is also reduced and it can
only output 50% rated torque. During the tests for M2PC,
when the load torque is increased, the system is tripped
and loses its control. The results confirm that the
proposed method is more effective and robust to DC bus
voltage reduction than either of the two methods.
Fig.25 Steady state responses at rated speed with reduced
DC bus voltage under the condition of the same 10kHz
sampling frequency
79
7 Conclusion
This paper proposes an improved two-vector-based
MPC for PMSM drives. Compared with the prior MPC
with duty cycle control, the proposed MPC expands the
selection scope of the second voltage vector, allowing
the non-zero vectors as candidates of the second vector.
As a result, the steady state performance is further
improved. Furthermore, the huge computational burden
caused by enumeration-based predictions in prior MPC
methods is eliminated by embracing the principle of
deadbeat current control. The two optimal voltage
vectors can be selected in a very efficient way without a
great number of enumerations. A compact and concise
expression of vector duration is derived, which is very
straightforward and easy to implement. The theoretical
study shows that the MPC with duty cycle control can be
considered as a special case of the proposed method,
where the second vector is fixed as a zero vector.
The proposed method is compared to conventional
MPCC, MPCC with duty cycle control, deadbeat control
and M2PC. Both simulation and experimental results
prove that the proposed MPC has better steady
performance than conventional MPC and prior MPC
with duty cycle control under the condition of the same
sampling frequency and the same average switching
frequency. Furthermore, very similar dynamic response
to prior MPC methods is obtained.
The comparison of the proposed method with
deadbeat control and M2PC shows that when the
sampling frequency is the same and the dc bus voltage is
sufficient, the steady state performance of the proposed
MPC is still inferior to deadbeat control, however
difference in performance is insignificant. However,
when the DC bus voltage is low, the proposed MPC
outperforms deadbeat control and M2PC by presenting
higher speed range with lower torque ripples.
Furthermore, the principle of error minimization rather
than error elimination in the cost function leaves the
freedom to achieve more control aims, which may be
studied in the future.
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Yongchang Zhang (M’10, SM’18) received
the B.S. degree from Chongqing University,
China, in 2004 and the Ph.D. degree from
Tsinghua University, China, in 2009, both in
electrical engineering. From August 2009 to
August 2011, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow
at the University of Technology Sydney,
Australia. He joined North China University of
Technology in August 2011 as an associate
professor. Currently he is a full professor and
the director of Inverter Technologies Engineering Research Center of
Beijing. He has published more than 100 technical papers in the area
of motor drives, pulse width modulation and AC/DC converters. His
current research interest is model predictive control for power
converters and motor drives.
Y. Zhang et al.: Performance Evaluation of Two-Vector-Based Model Predictive Current Control of PMSM Drives
Lanlan Huang was born in 1994. She
received the B.S. degree in renewable energy
science and engineering from North China
University of Technology, Beijing, China, in
2016, where she is currently working toward
the master’s degree in electrical engineering.
Her research interests include model
predictive control of PMSM drives.
Donglin Xu was born in 1992. He received
the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from
North China University of Technology,
Beijing, China, in 2015, where he is currently
working toward the master’s degree in
electrical engineering. His research interests
include model-predictive control of doubly
fed induction generators.
81
Jiali Liu was born in 1989. He received the
B.S. degree in electrical engineering from
North China Institute of Science and
Technology, Beijing, China, in 2013. He is
currently working toward the master’s degree
in electrical engineering at the North China
University of Technology, Beijing. His
research interests include model-predictive
control of permanent magnet synchronous
machine drives.
Jialin Jin was born in 1993. He received the
B.S. degree from North China University of
Technology in 2017. He is currently working
toward the Master degree in electrical
engineering at North China University of
Technology, Beijing, China. His research
interest is model predictive control of
permanent magnet synchronous motor drives.