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Presents a listing of the best papers and distinguished reviewers for this publication in 2020.

In this paper, the influence of the stiffness and damping of real elastic shafts on the behavior of a multidrive system driving a tissue paper machine is investigated. The drive system consists of four DC motors, where two of them drive the Yankee drying cylinder and the other two drive the presses section. Six-pulse thyristor bridge power converters that are connected to the same power transformer supply the motors. The inertias of the motors and the driven machines, in conjunction with the shaft stiffness, form mechanical resonators. Thus, resonance phenomena may occur, which may lead to undesirable results. This particular case results to two three-mass and one five-mass systems. This paper presents an analysis of the resonance frequencies of two sections of the machine during startup and machine production, considering the shaft stiffness (shaft diameter, length, and thickness). The elastic shafts eliminate the ripple of the motor electromagnetic torque, which is transferred to the driven machine. The behavior of elastic shafts with different stiffness in the transmission system is studied. Moreover, the steady state and dynamic behavior of the system considering the influence of the elastic shafts and vibration analysis were investigated using simulation. A model algorithm for system simulation was developed using the MATLAB/SIMULINK software. Characteristic simulation results are presented and are expressed in terms of speed and torque response. Considering the resonance frequency analysis and simulation results, mechanical design guidelines can be given for the most significant drive components in order to avoid torsional oscillation resonance phenomena and minimize torsional oscillations of the drive system.

The design rules of winding configurations and stator-pole/rotor-tooth (SP/RT) number combinations of doubly-fed flux-switching permanent magnet (DF-FSPM) machines are investigated in this paper based on coil-EMF vectors. The relationships between the components of stator and rotor coil-EMF vector diagrams are unveiled at first, including the numbers of stator and rotor phases, and the numbers of stator and rotor spokes. Then, the SP/RT number combinations are derived considering feasible stator/rotor phase number combinations and different winding configurations. The SP/RT number combinations are optimized considering the winding factors, magnetic field harmonics, unbalanced magnetic forces and machine diameter. It is shown that both of the stator and rotor pitch factors increase when the SP and RT numbers get closer. Furthermore, the influence of winding configurations and SP/RT number combinations on electromagnetic performances of DF-FSPM machines are analyzed by finite-element method. Finally, the analysis results are validated by experiment.

Low-speed drive is one of the challenges for modular multilevel converters (MMCs) due to large capacitor voltage fluctuation. In this paper, a cascaded MMC and cycloconverter (CCV) based machine drive system is proposed to ensure stable operation of medium- -voltage and low-speed machine. The MMC provides medium-frequency ac voltage for the CCV, and the CCV converts the medium-frequency ac input to low-frequency ac output required by the machine. Detailed analysis about MMCs operation frequency, device current stress and submodule (SM) capacitance are given in this paper. Proposed drive system can operate at zero/low frequency under rated load torque, while the SM capacitance is much smaller than that in existing methods. Simulation and experimental studies are conducted, and the results verify the effectiveness of proposed system.

This paper studies the problem of controlling a multi-robot system to achieve a polygon formation in a self-organized manner. Different from the typical formation control strategies where robots are steered to satisfy the predefined control variables, such as pairwise distances, relative positions and bearings, the foremost idea of this paper is to achieve polygon formations by injecting control inputs randomly to a few robots (say, vertex robots) of the group, and the rest follow the simple principles of moving towards the midpoint of their two nearest neighbors in the ring graph without any external inputs. In our problem, a fleet of robots is initially distributed in the plane. The socalled vertex robots take the responsibility of determining the geometric shape of the entire formation and its overall size, while the others move so as to minimize the differences with two direct neighbors. In the first step, each vertex robot estimates the number of robots in its associated chain. Two types of control inputs that serve for the estimation are designed using the measurements from the latest and the last two time instants respectively. In the second step, the self-organized formation control law is proposed where only vertex robots receive external information. Comparisons between the two estimation strategies are carried out in terms of the convergence speed and robustness. The effectiveness of the whole control framework is further validated in both simulation and physical experiments.

In this paper, a converter-based multi-bus DC microgrid (MG) in series is studied, in which the trade-off between voltage recovery and current equalization has been a hot topic of interest. To solve this problem, a distributed learning-based high-order fully actuated (DL-HOFA) secondary control is proposed in this paper, and the simple structure of this control technique facilitates its application in various modern DC MGs with different configurations. Before designing the secondary control protocol, this paper provides a comprehensive description of DC MGs in advance. In the suggested control strategy, the controller design is tightly related to the underlying physical characteristics of the MG, and this prominent feature represents a significant improvement in its adaptability. In addition, the DL-HOFA control obtains fast dynamic and accurate current sharing performance by virtue of the high-order fully actuated DC MG model. The effectiveness of the proposed control method is verified on a real photovoltaic- and battery-based hardware system with maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller.

In this paper a finite control set model predictive control is used to track a current reference in a power converter connected to an RL load. An artificial intelligence (AI) approach is presented for real-time determination of the weighting factor that regulates the average switching frequency, independently of the operating point. The paper focuses on the design, training, and digital implementation of an artificial neural network (ANN) that can be developed in a low-cost control platform. It is presented a sampling and offline ANN training procedure, together with a low-cost hardware implementation based on integer quantization of the ANN. The above approach provides a standalone application, serving as a framework for development of ANN applications for power-converters. The main advantage of the presented approach is that the ANN inference is executed in real-time. In this way, the weighting factor is automatically updated in real-time, allowing the system to quickly adapt to any reference step changes, and consequently provide the desired behavior. Executing the setup in laboratory prototype confirmed the theoretical analysis and successful tracking of the reference frequency.

This paper investigates the effects of the signal average power and the ambient temperature on the behavioral modeling and pre-distortion of high-power amplifiers concurrently. The measurement results showed that in addition to the signal average power, the behavior of a high-power PA is a function of ambient temperature as well. This paper proposes a novel smart Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD) model that considers both average Power and Temperature (PTI-DPD). The PTI-DPD is implemented using Artificial Intelligence (AI) based model and it benefits from sets of data formats containing the signal, its delayed versions, signal average power, and ambient temperature. The devised apparatus provides an uninterrupted linearization across the ambient temperature and signal average power span without need for any feedback or multiple models. A series of measurements have been conducted to study the PTI-DPD performance across the temperature and average power range. According to the results, the PTI-DPD achieves an average of -48.5 dBc Adjacent Channel Power Ratio (ACPR) across the average power and temperature span.

This paper proposes a low-profile coplanar magnetic coupling resonance wireless power transfer system, which can be expanded segment by segment to power more receivers over a long distance with load-independent constant current output. Due to the low structural profile, it can easily conform to the environment such as desktops, floors, and walls, occupying a small space. By placing low-profile ferrite plates on or under the junctions of adjacent coplanar coils, the main coupling coefficients of the adjacent coils are significantly enhanced and therefore the power transmission efficiency (PTE) of the system is greatly improved. With the fixed operating frequency, load- independent current characteristics, simple structure, coplanarity with the environment, good scalability and high PTE, the system can be easily utilized in various medium and long-range multi- load WPT applications. The paper describes its principle in detail and clarifies the influence of losses on system performance such as output current characteristics, PTE and the maximum number of the charging segments. The experimental platform with two and three receivers was established to verify the theory, and the measurement results are in good agreement with the theoretical analysis. The maximum measured PTE reached 93.8% and 93.6% for two and three receivers, respectively.

Ring and meshed dc distribution grids have attracted increasing interest lately. Their multi-point and multi-terminal structure facilitates flexible operational control and reliable power supply across the network. However, the systems implemented with existing power converters lack sufficient control freedoms for proper power flow adjustment; therefore, it is necessary to develop additional dc power flow controllers (DCPFCs) to be added to these grids for improved power flow control capability. Specific to multi-terminal dc networks built with modular multilevel converters (MMCs), this paper proposes an embedded DCPFC (e-DCPFC) directly integrated in the MMC topology. Unlike previously proposed solutions, the e-DCPFC configuration is derived from the conventional MMC and does not need any isolation transformers or external power supply. Its other main features include modular construction, convenience for multiport extension and bipolar regulating capacity. In this paper, the topology, working principle, and the coordinated control strategy for e-DCPFC and its host MMC are elaborated. Experimental results from a lab prototype verify the proposed topology and its performance under typical working conditions.

In this paper, a hybrid Modular multilevel converter (MMC) topology is proposed, in which two of the submodules (SMs) are based on SiC MOSFET, while others are based on Si IGBT. In the proposed hybrid topology, the capacitor voltage of SiC SM is controlled to be half of that of Si SM, which reduces the requirement for the SiC devices. Whats more, this paper improves the modulation scheme to move most of the switching actions from Si SMs to the two SiC SMs, which strengthens the merits and avoids the shortcomings of SiC MOSFET. Besides, to solve the voltage imbalance problem caused by the change of topology and modulation scheme, a specialized voltage balancing scheme is proposed. Finally, the simulation and experiment result proves the feasibility of the hybrid MMC and control scheme, and the comprehensive analysis verifies that the hybrid MMC can achieve a better balance among cost, loss and feasibility compared with others.

This paper proposes a straightforward and effective control strategy to reduce the periodic speed ripple of the permanent-magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). The control strategy can be described as injecting current harmonics whose amplitude and phase can be adjusted automatically to compensate for periodic speed ripple. Compared with the resonant controller with the Tustin transform, the method proposed in the paper can track speed ripple frequency without frequency displacement, realizing no steady-state error. Besides, the system stability is analyzed, and the phase compensation scheme is proposed to increase the phase stability. Moreover, the equivalence between the harmonic injection module and the resonant controller has been analyzed, which provides a simple way to understand the phase compensation of the resonant controller. The theoretical analysis and experimental results are presented to verify the feasibility of the proposed harmonic injection method.

This paper addresses the problem of proper flicker severity assessment by smart energy meters. Flicker severity occurs for a typical voltage clipped cosine distortion caused by operation of power electronic devices in the power grid. The voltage distortion caused only by higher harmonics does not cause voltage fluctuations, and therefore does not cause flicker. This paper presents the research results for some models of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) smart meters, for which irregularities are observed in the voltage variation severity assessment if the typical voltage distortion occurs in the power grid. Possible mistakes in implementation of flickermeter signal chain as defined by International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in smart meters that influence the measurement results have been explained. The analysis of the influence of typical voltage distortion on the indicator Pst measurement has been carried out analytically and in numerical simulation studies using the modeled flickermeter signal chain.

Existing studies about the harmonic analysis of grid-connected converters (GCCs) mainly focus on the frequency range below Nyquist sampling frequency (NSF) or switching frequency (SF) to make full use of linearization. However, in some actual high-power industrial applications, e.g. electric railways or wind power generation, harmonic problems are challenging in a wide frequency that can be as high as thousands of hertz. This is much higher than the NSF and SF. In order to bridge the gap, this paper extends the harmonic analysis frequency to the entire frequency range by addressing the aliasing effect and sideband effect. These two effects can be neglected at the low frequency for simplification while they will make great differences at the high-frequency, as demonstrated in this paper, due to the frequency coupling and nonlinear characteristics. In this regard, a regression method based on an artificial neural network (ANN) is used to map the in-out relation of the pulse width modulation (PWM) process. By adopting the methodology of this paper, harmonic performances of GCCs can be analyzed comprehensively and explicitly in terms of harmonic instability, harmonic resonance, harmonic overvoltage, filter design and so on. Finally, Experiments are presented to verify the effectiveness and accuracy of the analysis.

In this paper, a novel optical rotary sensor based on laser self-mixing interferometry is developed for the full-circle rotation measurement. The proposed sensor is convenient to use for it does not need any contact with the target or a cooperative mirror. A prototype is fabricated and tested. The measured results demonstrate a good performance compared with other optical rotary sensors, in terms of the 0.1 μrad resolution, the 2.33×10-4 linearity and 2 μrad stability over one hour. Additionally, the repeatability error is below 14.66 mrad under 9-group full-circle tests, which exhibits the potential to be instrumentalized reliably. Error analysis and limitation discussion have been also carried out. Although the accuracy needs further improvement compared with the best rotary sensor, this method has its unique advantages of high resolution, non-cooperative target sensing and electromagnetic immunity. Hence, the proposed optical rotary sensor provides a promising alternative in precise rotation measurement, tremor tracing and nano-motion monitoring.In this paper, a novel optical rotary sensor based on laser self-mixing interferometry is developed for the full-circle rotation measurement. The proposed sensor is convenient to use for it does not need any contact with the target or a cooperative mirror. A prototype is fabricated and tested. The measured results demonstrate a good performance compared with other optical rotary sensors, in terms of the 0.1 μrad resolution, the 2.33×10-4 linearity and 2 μrad stability over one hour. Additionally, the repeatability error is below 14.66 mrad under 9-group full-circle tests, which exhibits the potential to be instrumentalized reliably. Error analysis and limitation discussion have been also carried out. Although the accuracy needs further improvement compared with the best rotary sensor, this method has its unique advantages of high resolution, non-cooperative target sensing and electromagnetic immunity. Hence, the proposed optical rotary sensor provides a promising alternative in precise rotation measurement, tremor tracing and nano-motion monitoring.

This paper focuses on solving the problem of precise peg-in-hole assembly. This paper aims at realizing the insertion assembly tasks of cylindrical or prismatic objects with clearance or interference fit. First, a feature space and a response space are constructed according to the relative pose and equivalent forces and moments. Then the contact states are segmented in the feature space and the segmentation boundaries are mapped into the response space. Further, a feature-based compliance control (FBCC) method is proposed based on boundary mapping. In FBCC method, a direction matrix is designed to execute accurate adjustment and an integral element is applied to eliminate residual responses. Finally, the simulations and experiments demonstrate the superiority and robustness of FBCC method.

This paper proposes a primary-side linear control strategy to realize the constant current (CC)/voltage (CV) charging for the wireless power transfer (WPT) system, based on the LCC-N circuit. Different from the conventional compensation topology used in control strategies, this paper combines magnetic integration structure on the primary side and non-compensation topology on the secondary side. Firstly, the LCC-N magnetic integration and non-compensation topology is introduced. An improved parameters identification method considering the non-pure resistive input impedance characteristics of the rectifier is proposed to identify the current, voltage and equivalent resistance of the load, based on the LCC-N topology. In the process of identification, the relationship between the input impedance of the rectifier and the load is needless. Then, according to the LCC-N output characteristics and identified load parameters, the relationship between the input voltage and load current and voltage is simplified to linear through the linear superposition of fundamental wave and third harmonic. A linear control strategy on the primary side is proposed to achieve CC/CV output. Finally, a 1 kW WPT prototype is built. The experimental results show that the maximum error of the output current and voltage are 1.8% and 1.2% during the CC and CV charging, respectively.

Vernier reluctance machine with DC field coils in stator is a competitive rare-earth-free design for variable-speed industrial applications due to its robust structure and controllable excitation, while its torque density is relatively disadvantageous. To address this issue, this paper proposes a new armature winding design method for VRM with DC field coils across two stator teeth. The key is to break the traditional winding design principle based on the flux modulation effect of fundamental DC field harmonic, and instead, reconstruct a novel harmonic winding to enhance the utilization factor of the modulated high-order DC field harmonics. By this means, the torque density can be improved by 75.6% compared to the existing poor counterpart. In this paper, the machine structure and operation principle are introduced, with emphasis on the high-order DC field harmonics distribution rule and its influence on the armature winding design. By finite element design and optimization, a comparative study is performed to evaluate the machine performance using two different winding configurations with variable slot pole combinations. A prototype is fabricated and tested, and the results agree well with finite element analysis, which verifies the feasibility and advantages of the proposed winding design method.

Following the continuous development of wide bandgap (WBG) devices and multilevel converter technology, medium voltage (MV) active front ends (AFEs) are becoming promising in future high-power-density and high-power applications. However, the cost issue is one of the major drawbacks, which stops the WBG devices from being widely applied in high-power areas. This paper proposes a silicon carbide (SiC) and silicon (Si) hybrid five-level unidirectional rectifier. It requires only four SiC MOSFETs with relatively low blocking voltage and four Si diodes. Meanwhile, by adding snubber capacitors, all the Si devices are with low-speed switching, and the voltage stresses of fast SiC MOSFETs are minimized. In this paper, operational analysis and carrier-based phase-disposition PWM scheme for this circuit are discussed in detail. The capacitor voltage balancing and unity power factor are both realized. Simulation and scaled-down experimental results are demonstrated to verify the proposed rectifier. Furthermore, the comparison of the hybrid five-level rectifiers is given to show the advantages of the proposed rectifier in terms of voltage stress, efficiency, and cost.

This paper presents a partial-power post-regulated LLC resonant converter. In the proposed topology, the input power is first transferred to the secondary side of the transformer through the LLC-DCX converter to achieve galvanic isolation and voltage conversion functions. Then, most of the power is directly transmitted to the load side, and only a small portion of the power is converted to the output side by the partial-power processing converter (PPC). Therefore, unlike the two-stage solution, the converter proposed in this paper achieves output voltage regulation while minimizing the efficiency loss caused by the two-stage conversion. The operating principle of the proposed converter is analyzed, and the system prototype is constructed. Experimental result validates the correctness of the analysis and proves the feasibility of the proposed converter.