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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.

Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication Principles "Performance Improvement of a Line-Start Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motor" by Solmaz Kahourzade, Amin Mahmoudi and Wooi Ping Hew, in the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE's Publication Principles. This paper was submitted with significant similarity to ideas and applications presented in the thesis listed below. The paper includes a reference to the thesis, but there was no clear delineation between their work and previous work presented in the thesis. Two of the authors, Solmaz Kahourzade and Amin Mahmoudi were found to be responsible for the misconduct. "Line Start Permanent Magnet Motors," by Arash Hassanpour Isfahani, in Ph.D dissertation, Department of Electrical Engineering, Tehran University, Iran, 2011. This paper presents the design and performance analysis of a line-start permanent-magnet synchronous motor to overcome the efficiency and power factor deficiencies of induction motors. Proper start-up and synchronization are considered. An optimization algorithm is applied to improve the rotor bar resistance for the smooth line start of the motor. Dynamic d-q modeling and finite element analysis are performed to predict the transient and steady-state performances of the motor. Based on the presented optimized design, a 3-phase, 4-pole, 2 kW line-start permanent-magnet synchronous motor is fabricated and tested. Simulation and experimental results validate the improved performance of the proposed optimized motor.

This paper employs the recently developed nonlinear control tools to solve the engineering problem of stable current control of fused magnesium furnaces (FMFs). By fully taking into account the nonlinearity, uncertainty, and couplings in FMFs, this paper first develops a dynamic model for controller design. A mild assumption for controller design is verified by using experimental data. Based on the dynamic model, this paper proposes a class of stable control rules for the disturbance-free model. Then, the result is extended to handle both measurement errors and external disturbances. With the proposed control algorithm, it is proved that the closed-loop system is robustly stable, and the three-phase currents ultimately converge to neighborhoods of the setpoints. If the system is disturbance-free, then asymptotic stability can be guaranteed. It is shown that the proposed control algorithm can be readily implemented as rule-based control. The notion of input-to-state stability and the nonlinear small-gain theorem are employed as tools for the designs. An industrial application is demonstrated to show the validity of the proposed design in solving practical engineering problems.

This paper proposes a magnet-frozen-permea-bility finite-element method and an experimental approach for inductance analysis of a variable-flux permanent magnet machine. The machine studied uses Alnico magnets, whose nonlinear magnetic properties deteriorate the inductance calculation accuracy. Besides the machine core permeability is frozen, the magnet-frozen-permeability approach freezes nonlinear B–H curves and nonlinear permeabilities of the magnets in the finite-element analysis. Because the soft magnets have low coercive force, conventional symmetric inductance measurement currents may demagnetize them. This paper presents a zero-start dc-biased current trajectory tracking approach. This approach uses positive current, which avoids demagnetization during the inductance measurement. Meanwhile, based on flux linkage-current curves, influences of resistance can be eliminated. Cross-magnetization effects are evaluated in the two proposed methods. Inductances of these two methods are compared and show good agreements.

Microinverters require high voltage gain capability for interfacing the low dc voltage output of photovoltaic (PV) module to single-phase ac grid. A two-stage nonisolated inverter is proposed in this paper, with a first boost stage and a second traditional pulse width modulated grid-tied inverter stage. The proposed boost stage consists of a coupled inductor added with a voltage multiplier to achieve the required high voltage gain at high efficiency and to operate over a wide input voltage range. Among the coupled inductor topologies, adding a clamp circuit is a common solution to limit the voltage spike caused by leakage inductance. In the proposed converter, the resonance between the coupled inductor and voltage multiplier is used to address the issue of voltage spike, thereby reducing both component count and device voltage stress. Detailed analysis and design procedure of the proposed converter is presented in this paper. Experimental results of a 250-W microinverter are presented to validate the proposed converter.

Commutation error degrades the operating performance of a high-speed permanent magnet brushless dc motor (BLDC) sensorless drive significantly. It is caused by different kinds of nonideal factors such as low-pass filters (LPFs), digital control delay, and other units in a control loop. This paper analyzes the commutation error caused by different kinds of nonideal factors and points out that the total commutation error is substantially equivalent to the error of an internal power factor (IPF) angle of the BLDC motor. The purpose of the commutation correction in this paper is to regulate the IPF angle to zero. A novel phase-lock loop (PLL)-based commutation correction strategy is proposed and designed in detail in this paper. The proposed PLL consists of a novel PM flux linkage based phase discriminator to detect the IPF angle, an LPF, and an autophase regulator (APR). The function of the proposed PLL is to lock the IPF angle to a reference value. Compared to the conventional scheme, the greatest advantage of the proposed scheme is that the proposed PLL is robust to any kind of phase delay caused by nonideal factors in the control loop, and it is quite important for a high-speed motor drive. Both simulation and experimental results verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed correction strategy.

To improve light load efficiency, a three-phase photovoltaic (PV)-based microinverter may operate in single-phase, two-phase or three-phase mode depending on the available input power. Therefore, its dc-link capacitor may be subjected to large peak-to-peak voltage ripple when operating in phase skipping mode. This paper determines the minimum value of the dc-link capacitor by allowing the maximum acceptable voltage ripple on the dc link. This allows for the use of film capacitors instead of electrolytic capacitors in order to improve the microinverter reliability. Unfortunately, higher dc-link voltage ripple introduces harmonic distortion on the inverter output current waveform if it is not compensated for by the dc-link voltage controller. This paper proposes a simple synchronous control method to regulate the dc-link voltage with the presence of large voltage ripple. The dc-link voltage controller is synchronized with the phase-locked loop and samples the average value of dc-link voltage without introducing unwanted harmonics into the voltage sense path. Experimental results were obtained from a 300-W three-phase half-bridge microinverter prototype to verify the proposed dc-link voltage control performance. Inverter output current total harmonic distortion of 1.6% was achieved even though the dc-link peak-to-peak voltage ripple reached as high as 87 V with 219-V split dc-link voltage. Dynamic response is fast enough to easily track the most extreme ramp change in input PV power.

In applications that demand single-input dual-output (SIDO) or dual-input single-output (DISO) dc–dc converters, employing two separate single-input single-output (SISO) converters is a solution. However, the number of components is doubled, resulting in high overall cost. In order to reduce costs, this paper proposes a novel topology synthesis methodology, with which a variety of SIDO and DISO dc–dc converters with reduced components can be derived. The principle of topology synthesis states that integrated SIDO and DISO dc–dc converters can be easily developed from conventional SISO converters by replacing a diode with a basic cell inclusive of additional input/output port. The principle is effective for many SISO dc–dc converters, and as an example, topology synthesis based on buck, boost, buck–boost, Cuk, sepic, and zeta SISO converters is performed in this paper. In order to achieve better understanding of the proposed converters, the integrated SIDO Cuk converter is specifically analyzed and experimentally verified. In comparison with the conventional scheme of two separate SISO Cuk converters, good cross regulation is retained while the number of diodes, inductors, and capacitors is reduced in the proposed SIDO Cuk converter. In addition, zero-voltage-switching operation of one switch is achieved, contributing to lower switching losses. Finally, a prototype circuit with 48-V input and 156 V/1 A, 24 V/4 A outputs is built to validate the theoretical analysis.

This paper presents a practical discrete-time fractional order terminal sliding mode (DFOTSM) control strategy for high-precision tracking tasks based on a linear motor. In particular, the practical parametric uncertainties involving sliding friction, uncertain payload, and disturbance in tracking tasks are considered in this paper. Combining Grunwald–Letnikov fractional order definition and terminal sliding mode technique, the proposed method synthesizes a novel DFOTSM control law to drive the sliding mode dynamics into the stable region in finite steps theoretically, even though the system is suffering from uncertainties and disturbances, and the motion on the surface can guarantee higher tracking precision than the conventional discrete-time terminal sliding surface by selecting suitable controller parameters. The theoretical analyses give out the guideline of parameter selection, and experiments are carried out on the linear-motor-based test platform to demonstrate that the proposed controller is easily implemented and can achieve high-precision tracking, fast response, and considerable robustness to uncertainties.

Force estimation methods enable robots to interact with the environment or humans compliantly and safely without additional sensing device. In this paper, we present a novel method for estimating unknown contact forces exerted on a robot manipulator. The force estimation method is divided into two steps. The first step is to identify a robot dynamics model. A parametric model is derived first based on rigid-body dynamic (RBD) theory. To improve the model accuracy, a nonparametric compensator trained with multilayer perception (MLP) is added to compensate for errors of the RBD model. The result is a semiparametric model that provides better model accuracy than either the RBD model or the MLP model alone. The second step is to construct a force estimation observer. A novel estimation method called disturbance Kalman filter (DKF) is developed in this paper. The design of DKF based on a time-invariant composite system model is presented. DKF can take both manipulator's dynamics model and disturbance's dynamics model into account. As with Kalman filter, it can provide robust and accurate estimation against uncertainty. Simulation and experimental results, obtained using a six-degrees-of-freedom Kinova Jaco2 manipulator, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

As a kind of direct-on-line motor, super premium efficiency (IE4) line-start synchronous reluctance motors (LS-SynRMs) were developed recently and are now used in many applications, including fans, pumps, and compressors. This paper presents an optimum design and comparative study of LS-SynRMs with additional losses and impact during the manufacturing process (electrical steel cutting/punching damage as well as squirrel-cage die-casting with bubble effects). The work results indicate that the LS-SynRM design with the “manufacturing process loss” effect should be considered and compensated for the design in order to achieve an IE4 class efficiency and ensure synchronization. Furthermore, the LS-SynRM rotor with multilayer flux barriers and rotor slots is investigated in detail. The influences of optimum design geometrical parameters (flux barriers thickness, segments thickness, length of rotor slots, etc.) on the performances of the basic model and optimum design model are evaluated with finite-element analysis (FEA) results. For more accurate results, the effects of saturation, saliency ratio, inductance difference, and the change in the B-H/B-P curve in damaged motor core edges are considered. Meanwhile, in the squirrel cage, the porosity rate distributions are considered. The copper loss, iron loss, starting torque, power factor, efficiency, and synchronization ability are investigated. The experimental results verify the accuracy of the process presented in this paper.

In this paper, we propose an approach for integrating a series filter inductance in a coaxially wound transformer (CWT) as a potential alternative to conventional solenoidally wound transformers (SWT) for high-power isolated soft-switching dc–dc converters. The critical elements that determine the size and the performance of soft-switching dc–dc converters are the isolation transformer and the filter elements. While conventional SWTs using a stray magnetic field as a filter inductance often suffer from a considerably increased loss, heat congestion, and electromagnetic interference, a CWT is rarely affected by high frequency and fringing effects. The desired properties are still valid while the required filter inductance is fully integrated with an isolation transformer using the proposed method. In addition, the evenly distributed magnetic fields in a concentric geometry enable accurate electrical and mechanical analysis and a specific application-oriented design. In this paper, the operating principles, design procedure, and loss modeling of a CWT with an integrated filter inductance are introduced. Its functionality and suitability for high-frequency applications were proven by theoretical analysis and experiments. A prototype transformer with an integrated inductance 4 mH was facilitated and evaluated in a 15 kV-SiC mosfet -based 6 k–400 Vdc stage for a solid-state transformer of up to 6.5 kW at a switching frequency of 20 kHz.

Recently, a series elastic actuator (SEA) has emerged as a potential actuator system for various robotic applications where safe and precise interactive force control is required. Even though lots of research has been conducted on the mechanical/controller design and the development of applications for SEAs, the accurate force observation issue has not been highlighted much. Only the simple law, that is, the spring in an SEA can measure interactive force has been repeatedly mentioned and utilized. However, this is not true when the load-side dynamics affects the spring deformation significantly. This paper tackles this problem by demonstrating the imprecise force observation of the spring deformation and proposing two types of external force observers to address the problem. A reaction force-sensing SEA (RFSEA) is adopted in this paper, and its dynamic characteristic is analyzed in detail using the Lagrangian mechanics. Based on the analyzed dynamics, force observers are designed and verified through simulations and experiments. An XY stage driven by RFSEAs is developed so that the stage can be force controlled, and the proposed force observers are applied to this. Human interactive forces on the developed XY stage, the impedance of which is controlled in several ways, are estimated and compared with a force plate. Various experimental results validate the performance and potential of the proposed force observer for SEA systems.

In this paper, a nonisolated dc–dc converter with high voltage gain is presented. Three diodes, three capacitors, an inductor, and a coupled inductor are employed in the presented converter. Since the inductor is connected to the input, the low input current ripple is achieved, which is important for tracking maximum power point of photovoltaic panels. The voltage stress across switch S is clamped by diode D 1 and capacitor C 1. Therefore, a main switch with low on-resistance RDS (on) can be employed to reduce the conduction loss. Besides, the main switch is turned on under zero current. This reduces the switching loss. The steady-state analysis of the proposed converter is discussed in this paper. Finally, the proposed converter prototype circuit is implemented to justify the validity of the analysis.

Underground localization is considered a key technology for controlling underground equipment, such as directional drilling equipment. However, most sensors for localization such as vision sensors, range sensors, and wireless sensors cannot be utilized in an underground environment. Moreover, vibration by the drill bit and distortion of the geomagnetic field by the surrounding material adversely affect localization performance. To accurately estimate the pose for directional drilling, a resilient underground localization method using concurrent normalized cross correlation (CNCC) and magnetic field vector is proposed in this paper. In the underground environment, a different magnetic field is distributed at each region. Since the drilling system moves only inside the borehole, the magnetic field distribution can be re-measured. Therefore, the constraint between the poses is detected by comparing the magnetic field distribution. A comparison method based on CNCC is proposed to resolve the ambiguity of the magnetic field. Moreover, to reduce the orientation error, magnetic field vector matching is used. The constraint can correct the pose estimation of the system using pose graph optimization. To validate the performance of the proposed method, two types of field tests are carried out in this paper.

Isolated high output current dc/dc converters are critical for power supplies in information technology industries. LLC converters with a matrix transformer are suitable for these applications due to their high efficiency and high power density. By pushing switching frequency up to MHz with GaN devices, planar matrix transformers with printed circuit board (PCB) windings are advantageous over conventional transformer designs, but the large interwinding capacitance of the PCB windings provides a critical coupling path for common-mode (CM) noise. In order to analyze the CM noise, the interwinding capacitance of the PCB windings is analyzed, and a related CM noise model is provided in this paper. To suppress the CM noise, shielding layers can automatically be inserted into the PCB windings between the primary and secondary windings in the fabrication process. This paper proposes a novel shielding technique, in which half of the shielding serve as the primary winding. The proposed shielding technique not only suppresses CM noise but improves the efficiency as well. The proposed shielding is verified by experiments on 1-MHz 400 V/12 V 800-W LLC converters with a peak efficiency of 97.7% and a power density of 900 W/in3. The proposed shielding reduces CM noise by 30 dB and improves full-load efficiency by 0.2%.

The paper develops a technique for arbitrary power sharing among three-phase winding sets of a multiphase generator. Multiple d − q modeling is commonly used when independent control of the winding sets is required. This paper utilizes instead the vector space decomposition modeling as the starting point and combines it with a multiple d − q approach to preserve the advantages of the vector space decomposition, while still enabling independent control over each winding set. The power sharing is achieved by imposing appropriate x − y currents at the fundamental frequency so that the flux and average torque are not affected. The theory is developed initially for the nine-phase machine. A general expression for arbitrary current sharing is derived further for any multiphase machine with multiple three-phase windings. The obtained equations are valid for any possible machine topology (asymmetrical/symmetrical, with single or multiple neutral points). The theory is validated experimentally using an asymmetrical nine-phase induction generator with indirect rotor field oriented control.

This paper presents three unidirectional step-up ac–dc converter topologies with voltage multiplication on their outputs. The first topology is the hybrid boost rectifier and the other two are novel bridgeless structures, all based on the integration of boost rectifier and the ladder switched-capacitor (SC) cell. The new hybrid structures provide high voltage gain with low voltage stress across the switches, high-power factor, and output voltage regulation. This paper presents the principle of operation, steady-state and dynamic analysis, design methodology, and experimental verification. A different approach is also presented for the design methodology of the SC cell and for the analysis of its influence on the dynamic model. Three 1000-W prototypes with a 220-V input voltage, 800-V output voltage, and 100-kHz switching frequency were designed to corroborate the theoretical study. The best efficiency was 97.1 $\%$ in the proposed bridgeless versions and the voltage stress across the switches stands around 400 V. Furthermore, a comparison between the proposed structures and previous topologies is also presented.

This paper presents an optimal design methodology of a dual-mechanical-port bidirectional flux-modulated machine for electric continuously variable transmission in hybrid electrical vehicles. The machine utilizes bidirectional flux modulation effect to combine two rotors and one stator together, aiming to realize electrical and mechanical power flexible split and combination. Due to the complexity of the machine structure, conventional optimization methods using analytical model are inapplicable. Therefore, an effective and practical method that combines the genetic algorithm and finite-element method (GA-FEM) is proposed to optimize the design of the machine in this paper. Since the computational cost increases exponentially with the increasing of number of design parameters, to reduce the computational cost in the optimization process, the design parameters are divided into two levels basing on a sensitivity analysis. And, then, the sensitive parameters are optimized using the GA-FEM coupled method. Finally, a prototype is fabricated to verify the effectiveness of the optimal design.

A prototype of a high-resolution synthesized magnetic field focusing (SMF) system for a possible application to radio frequency (RF) barcodes is proposed in this paper. It was recently found that coordinated control of array coil currents makes it possible to focus magnetic field, which is requisite for medical imaging, wireless power, and RF identification. Different from conventional phased array RF antennas, SMF is independent of frequency, which is quite promising for various applications. In this paper, an array of rectangular air coils is proposed, and various implementation issues, such as accurate control of coil currents and compact RF barcode design, are newly suggested. A prototype of an SMF system composed of a transmitter (Tx), an RF barcode, and a receiver (Rx) was implemented at below 1 MHz operating frequency. The Tx includes modularized control drivers, full-bridge switching converters, and 16 arrayed air coils, where the RF barcodes proposed in this paper include a self-resonating circuit at 20 mm × 20 mm and a tunable resonating circuit at 15 mm × 15 mm. In this way, a 5 mm resolution at a distance of 20 mm was achieved for the Tx arrayed air coils with spacing of 5 mm, which is about four times sharper magnetic field focusing compared to a nonfocusing conventional coil. Furthermore, the proposed SMF system allows the designed 5-bit RF barcode array to be fully distinguishable at a 15 mm distance.

This paper presents a method for small-signal dynamic studies of power systems including utility-scale PV energy systems considering the effects of dc-side components. Existing methods commonly model a PV energy system as a dc source connected to a grid-tied inverter. This paper shows that the dc components of a PV energy system can also contribute in the dynamics of the power system in the range of small-signal studies. The paper first develops the model of a PV energy system by merging the submodels of dc- and ac-side components. Then, a method to obtain the augmented model of the power system including a PV energy system will be explained using a study system. The study system consists of a PV energy system in parallel with a synchronous generator connected to a grid. Then, based on eigenvalue analysis, verified by time-domain simulations, it is shown that the dc-link capacitor, front-end converter, and its controller can introduce oscillatory modes in subsynchronous range of frequencies. Furthermore, it is shown that the damping of the sensitive modes can significantly vary with respect to the parameters of the dc-side components.

The smart transformer (ST), a solid-state transformer with control and communication functionalities, that interfaces medium voltage (MV) and low voltage (LV) grids, enables the control of the frequency in the LV grid independently from the MV one. In a ST-fed distribution grid, the ST can interact with the droop controllers of local generators and loads frequency characteristic to control the LV power demand. However, most of the existing controllers for power converters cannot guarantee good harmonic control under variable frequency condition. To address this issue, a frequency-adaptive control scheme based on the fractional-order repetitive control and the frequency-adaptive phase-locked loop are proposed in this paper. The proposed scheme provides fast online parameter tuning capability in order to be highly adaptive to variable frequencies, and it can be easily implemented in the power converters controllers of a ST-fed distribution grid. Moreover, the stability analysis of the frequency-adaptive system considering the effect of synchronization has been investigated in this paper. Simulation and experiments have been carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme as well as the considered scenarios.

In this paper, a coordinated adaptive droop control is addressed for DC microgrid to optimize its power distribution. The optimal solution for economical dispatch problem (EDP) of the microgrid is found through a fully distributed hierarchical control. The consensus-based economical regulator calculating the optimal solution for the generator is fully distributed. Thus, it eliminates the requirement of centralized coordinator. The droop controller receives the reference from the economical regulator and ensures the output power converging to the reference while maintaining the power balance of the system. Moreover, the economical regulator can estimate the load information of the system based on the characteristics of droop control. Thus, the information from load or renewable energy source is no longer required to solve the EDP that consequently decreases the number of communication nodes. This will reduce infrastructure cost, enhance the reliability, and fasten the converging speed of algorithm. The dynamic model is established and parameter selection guideline are given in this paper. A low-voltage dc-microgrid prototype platform is utilized to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control.

This paper presents a robust observer–controller scheme for sensor fault-resilient control in dc servomotor drive-based applications (such as antennae control for satellite tracking, radio telescopes, and conveyor belt systems). In contrast to the earlier works on abrupt faults, this paper considers incipient sensor faults and detects using the higher order sliding mode (HOSM) observer, followed by a tracking controller, which maintains the acceptable drive performance. A robust output tracking controller based on fractional integral terminal sliding mode surface with HOSM terms is developed to ensure faster and finite-time convergence of the error trajectory. Moreover, various slopes of incipient faults are considered to analyze the detection delay, and switching strategy reconfigures the system with the estimated speed whenever the residual crosses the threshold. The closed-loop performance in the presence of most common faults (abrupt, incipient, and intermittent) is experimentally validated on a dc motor-based industrial mechatronic drives unit with belt-drive inertial load (which exhibits nonlinear friction, torque variations, and other disturbances).

Design and optimization of synchronous reluctance machine for medium-speed flywheel energy storage system (FESS) applications is presented in this paper. High efficiency and high torque density are the main design criteria of the motor/generator system for electromechanical storage systems. Moreover, high salience ratio and appropriate stator design are required to achieve a high torque density and acceptable efficiency in synchronous reluctance machine. In this paper, the effects of key design parameters on the performance of the motor/generator system are investigated and an optimization procedure based on response surface methodology coupled to finite-element model is performed to achieve optimum value for stator and rotor parameters. The finite-element simulation results confirm that the performance of FESS improves significantly in comparison with initial design, by using the proposed design procedure. Finally, a prototype motor/generator system is implemented and experimental results are presented.

This paper proposes and validates model predictive control as an alternative control strategy for H-bridgeneutral-point-clamped (H-NPC) converters for single-phase grid-tied string photovoltaic (PV) systems. The presented control scheme achieves good quality current waveforms with unity power factor, dc-link voltage control, and neutral-point voltage minimization. Furthermore, the predictive controller has been further enhanced by including an average device switching frequency restriction and a $dv/dt$ mitigation. The main contribution of this paper is the avoidance of the potential leakage current due to parasitic capacitance of the PV modules by using a predictive model based control technique instead of modulated schemes and eliminating high-frequency common-mode voltage components. Experimental results during steady state and dynamic operation are presented to illustrate the behavior of the H-NPC converter commanded by the proposed control scheme.

This paper introduces a new class of microwave sensor architecture using direct conversion principle to eliminate data processing and provide low-power smart sensor nodes. Using a six-port circuit as the modulator, the sensing data are up-converted directly to a microwave frequency and sent by an antenna. At the receiver, a six-port circuit is used as a demodulator to down-convert the received signal and extract the sensing data. To predict the communication channel of the sensor network and provide a robust connection, a pilot sequence is sent along with the sensor data which is used in the calibration procedure at the receiver for accurate extraction of sensing data and making sensors smarter. Any kind of microwave sensors based on the variation of impedance can be used in the proposed structure. In this paper, the capacitive loading is used as a material sensor. By variation of material in the sensing area, the impedance of the load and reflection coefficient ( $\Gamma$ ) are changed. Then, the amplitude and phase of $\Gamma$ are transmitted via the six-port circuit, received in the network base station, and analyzed to find the material changes. As an example, a system is fabricated and evaluated at 2.45 GHz.

This paper systematically studies a new kind of PM machines with both stator and rotor PM excitations, namely, dual-PM excited machines. The key is to rely on the PM-iron structure in the machine to provide both PM excitation and flux modulation. Besides the fundamental field component in the air-gap, some other predominant harmonics introduced by the flux modulating effect can also contribute to the electromagnetic torque production. Therefore, this kind of machines can be designed with high torque density. Four dual-PM excited machine concepts with the same rotor configuration but different stator structures are comparatively studied, which include double-stator PM machine, stator multitooth-PM machine, stator slot-PM machine, and stator tooth-PM machine (STPM). Based on the flux modulating effect, the general design principle of the dual-PM machines is proposed in this paper. Through analytically investigating the air-gap field harmonics, the physical insight of the dual-PM machines is brought forward. All the four machines are optimized using an improved Tabu search coupled with finite element method, and their electromagnetic performances are comprehensively studied and compared. A prototype of STPM is manufactured. Experimental tests are conducted and the results well verify the electromagnetic design.

The main aim of this paper is the imposition of constraints for the multiobjective optimizations of magnetic gears. In order to reduce the computational effort, a semianalytic design procedure is adopted, providing a fast simulation tool that can be embedded within an optimization loop. Magnetic, thermal, and mechanical constraints are discussed and embedded into a stochastic algorithm, in order to identify immediately infeasible geometries. The algorithm that has been developed provides a useful initial design tool that can be adopted to locate the optimal solutions in the search space. This paper also presents the multistage magnetic gear topology as the counterpart of the multistage mechanical gearboxes.

This paper presents a new magnetic-gear pole-changing hybrid excitation machine (MG-PCHEM), which can provide high torque density and improved flux-weakening ability. The key is to flexibly change the pole-pair number of inner excitation sources by injecting variable dc field currents, and, hence, regulate the dominant pole-pair flux components to realize an effective magnetic field adjustment. In the following paper, the machine configuration and its operation principle of flux control are introduced first. Then, the influences of some leading design parameters are analyzed including the slot-pole combination and other dimension parameters, and after which a comparative study is carried out with traditional single-stator topology. Based on the optimal design, electromagnetic performance of the MG-PCHEM is further evaluated by using the finite-element method. Finally, a prototype is designed, manufactured, and fully tested. Relevant experimental results verify the feasibility of this new hybrid solution as well as the finite-element predictions.

This paper deals with an analysis of a middle-frequency resistance spot-welding (RSW) system with a dc welding current controlled by a pulsewidth modulated inverter, which supplies a welding transformer with a full-wave rectifier mounted at the secondary. Welding transformers in the automotive industry are usually mounted on the arm of a moving robot, so the weight is important. To achieve the same welding power with a large welding current, the transformer's weight can be reduced with a higher PWM switching frequency. This higher frequency allows a reduction in the transformer's iron-core cross section with shorter primary and secondary windings. Unfortunately, the leakage inductances prevent the RSW system from achieving the same nominal welding current at higher frequencies. The frequency-dependent maximum welding current is a characteristic behavior of the RSW system, which can be determined by sophisticated and time-consuming simulations or with the expensive measurements. The third option presented in this paper is determination of an analytical solution, which allows calculation of the maximum welding current as function of frequency or any parameter of the RSW system circuit model. The analytically calculated frequency-dependent function of the maximum welding current was completely confirmed by measurements on an industrial RSW system and by numerical simulations.

Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) allow the use of battery-operated nodes to provide easy deployment, even in harsh environments, and are low maintenance. The optimal network design can be difficult because several constraints and requirements must be considered among all the power consumption. For this reason, specific approaches, also based on soft computing methods, can be applied in such a way as to further decrease the energy consumption in IWSNs. To this end, this paper proposes a fuzzy logic based mechanism that, according to the battery level and the ratio of throughput to workload, defines the sleeping time of sensor devices in an IWSN based on IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is introduced to obtain the optimal values and parameters of the proposed fuzzy logic controller (FLC), i.e., optimizing the membership functions, by varying their range, to achieve the best results regarding the battery life of sensor nodes. This paper provides a detailed description of the FLC configuration, a logical analysis of the PSO algorithm for the derivation of best performance conditions values, and simulative assessments obtained through MATLAB simulations.

Measurement and control of electric power quality (PQ) parameters in off-grid systems has played an important role in recent years. The purpose is to detect or forecast the presence of PQ parameter disturbances to be able to suppress or to avoid their negative effects on the power grid and appliances. This paper focuses on several PQ parameters in off-grid systems and it defines three evaluation criteria that are supposed to estimate the performance of a new forecasting model combining all the involved PQ parameters. These criteria are based on common statistical evaluations of computational models from the machine learning field of study. The studied PQ parameters are voltage, power frequency, total harmonic distortion, and flicker severity. The approach presented in this paper also applies a machine learning based model of random decision forest for PQ forecasting. The database applied in this task contains real off-grid data from long-term one-minute measurements. The hyperparameters of the model are optimized by multiobjective optimization toward the defined evaluation criteria.

Motivated by industry needs, this paper focuses on statistical models, descriptive probabilistic data analysis, and data-prescriptive signal processing in smart inertial sensors. These multimode sensors combine physical and cyber components such as solid-state and micromachined motion sensing elements, processing and interfacing integrated circuits, middleware, and software. We develop consistent algorithms and tools based upon cross-cutting engineering science along with substantiation and validation. Fundamental, applied, and experimental results are reported. Our multidisciplinary findings advance fundamental knowledge and enhance transformative technologies. We empower synergetic system-level integration of diverse device physics with descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analyses. This paper contributes to the design and deployment of the next generation of smart sensors which utilize front-end microelectronic, microelectromechanical system, and processing technologies.

This paper investigates a dc collection grid architecture to process energy from offshore wind turbine generators (WTGs), which can be further interfaced with the shore via a high-voltage dc network. In the proposed approach, WTG output voltage is rectified and converted to medium frequency (MF). Then, a transformer isolation stage is used, followed by a boost rectification stage. The boost rectification stage is controlled to emulate a resistive load, forming a medium voltage dc (MVDC) interconnection. This type of control is simple for varying wind conditions. The operating principles and unique advantages of the proposed approach are documented along with comparison with a conventional benchmark, assuming the turbines are fitted with direct drive technology. System design example, loss/size analysis and transformer finite element analysis are shown in this paper. Simulation results demonstrate the functional capability of the system. Experimental results from a scaled down prototype prove the operation of proposed concept.

This paper proposes a modular multilevel dc-link dc solid-state transformer (MADCT) based on high-frequency dual active phase shift for HVDC grid integration. The proposed MADCT employs one arm of modular multilevel converter as HVDC active front-end interface and dual active bridge as high-frequency power transfer link, which brings many advantages and makes the operation of MADCT quiet different with traditional dc transformers. Compared with the traditional dc transformer schemes, the MADCT not only has good modularity and flexibility but also has good fault handling capacity. Especially, the performances of current stress, power transfer capacitor, and efficiency are improved. The topology, operation principle, voltage, current, power performances, and control and parameter design are presented and analyzed comprehensively in this paper. At last, a MADCT prototype is built and the experimental results verify the correctness and effectively of the proposed solution.

Latterly, multilevel inverters have become more attractive for researchers due to low total harmonic distortion in the output voltage and low electromagnetic interference. This paper proposes a novel single-stage quasi-cascaded H-bridge five-level boost inverter (qCHB-FLBI). The proposed five-level inverter has the advantages over the CHB quasi-Z-source inverter in cutting down passive components. Consequently, size, cost, and weight of the proposed inverter are reduced. Additionally, the proposed qCHB-FLBI can work in the shoot-though state. A capacitor with low voltage rating is added to the proposed topology to remove an offset voltage of the output ac voltage when the input voltages of two modules are unbalanced. Besides, a simple PID controller is used to control the capacitor voltage of each module. This paper presents circuit analysis, the operating principles, and simulation results of the proposed qCHB-FLBI. A 1.2-kVA laboratory prototype was constructed based on a DSP TMS320F28335 to validate the operating principle of the proposed inverter.

One way to incorporate the increasing amount of wind penetration is to control wind turbines to emulate the behavior of conventional synchronous generators. However, the energy balance is the main issue for the wind turbines to be truly dispatchable by the power system operator such as the generators. This paper presents a comprehensive virtual generator control method for the full converter wind turbine, with a minute-level energy storage in the dc link as the energy buffer. The voltage closed-loop virtual synchronous generator control of the wind turbine allows it to work under both grid-connected and stand-alone condition. Power balance of the wind turbine system is achieved by controlling the rotor speed of the turbine according to the loading condition. With the proposed control, the wind turbine system can enhance the dynamic response, and can be dispatched and regulated by the system operator. The sizing design of the short term energy storage is also discussed in this paper. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control method.

The increasing penetration of renewable sources, particularly wind energy, has provided the power system with large-scale clean electricity. For integrating gigawatt offshore wind energy, voltage source converter (VSC) based multiterminal HVDC transmission is the prospective technology with flexible control characteristics. Most of the papers so far have dealt with improving the frequency performance caused by an ac system disturbance, and only a few deals with the influence of dc system converter outage on frequency performance. However, the converter outage will bring successive power impulses to the onshore ac grids. This paper presents an optimized power redistribution method to enhance the frequency performance of onshore ac grids. The two scenarios of power redistribution after converter outage are analyzed: self-distributed type and nonself-distributed type. For the self-distributed scenario, the optimized power redistribution method involves three steps: sensitive cluster identification, optimized power redistribution calculation, and dc grid operating point setting. For the nonself-distributed scenario, a combined offshore wind farm control strategy with emulating inertia control and auxiliary pitch angle control is proposed to alleviate the adverse effect of the transferred surplus power on asynchronous grids. Simulation verifications are carried out in a modified New England 39-bus system with seven terminal VSC-HVDC transmission system.

This paper presents a medium-voltage wind energy conversion system with integrated storage that implements power electronics converter based on modular multilevel topology. The proposed converter has a storage system integrated into its modular cell structure. This paper analyzes the proposed topology and presents detail sizing procedure for both converter and storage system in order to meet new grid connection standards and fault ride through (FRT) requirements. In order to verify the system operation, high detail model of the converter leg is used to simulate independent power control on ac and dc sides of the converter needed for the successful implementation of the FRT control.

This paper deals with the problem of pose estimation (or motion estimation) for multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by using only an off-board camera. An extended Kalman filter (EKF) is often adopted to solve this problem. However, the accuracy and robustness of an EKF are limited partly by the usage of an existing linear constant-velocity process model applicable to many rigid objects. For such a reason, a nonlinear constant-velocity process model featured with the characteristics of multirotor UAVs is proposed in this paper, the superiority of which is explained from the perspective of observability. With the new process model and a generic camera model, a practical EKF method suitable for conventional cameras and fish-eye cameras is then proposed. By taking EKF implementation into account, a general correspondence method that could handle any number of feature points is further designed. Simulation and real experiments show that the proposed EKF method is more robust against noise and occlusion than currently employed filtering methods.

This paper proposes a wide-range zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) active-clamped current-fed push–pull converter for fuel cell application. The presented converter achieves ZVS for all of the primary switches and ZCS for secondary diodes from rated load to 10% full load over the wide input voltage variation, improving the overall efficiency. The ZVS of switches is realized by the energy stored in the transformer leakage inductance aided by the secondary parallel inductor. An additional active clamping circuit suppresses the voltage spike as well as assists in realizing ZVS of switches. Low-voltage-rated switches with low on-state resistance can be used. Moreover, the voltage-doubler rectifier is adopted to release the reverse-recovery problem of rectifier diodes and reduce turns ratio of the high-frequency transformer. Detailed steady-state operation, analysis, design, control, comparative study, and experimental results are discussed in depth in this paper. Finally, a 200-W prototype has been built in the laboratory to verify the effectiveness of the proposed converter.

The series-resonant converter (SRC) has been used in several application and it recently became popular for smart transformers (STs). In this application, the efficiency and reliability are of paramount importance. Although many papers have addressed the design challenges to improve the converter efficiency, discussions about the reliability are still missing in the literature. In this context, this paper presents a design procedure focusing on the efficiency and reliability improvement of the SRC for ST application. High efficiency is achieved through the use of silicon-carbide MOSFETs, reducing conduction and switching losses, and the detail design procedure based on accurate losses modeling. High reliability is achieved through a fault-tolerant topology and reliability-oriented design of the resonant circuit passive components. Experimental results obtained for the optimized 10 kW SRC has shown an efficiency of 98.61%.

An electrical variable transmission (EVT) is an electromagnetic power-split device with two mechanical and two electrical ports. It can be used in hybrid electric vehicles to split the power to the wheels in a part coming from the combustion engine and a part exchanged with the battery. Although crucial for the EVT design and evaluation, no papers are found to give a detailed overview of the different loss components in such a machine and how they can be calculated and measured. In contrast to conventional electrical machines, this machine has more degrees of freedom, which can be exploited to measure the different loss contributions separately. This paper proposes a methodology to identify and measure the different loss components in this kind of machines. The proposed method is able to identify the iron losses in stator and inner rotor, the copper losses, bearing losses, and slip ring friction losses separately. To this end, measurements of both torque and speed sensors in different operating points are combined. The methods are applied to identify the different loss contributions in a prototype permanent magnet assisted EVT, both in no-load operation as under load where its functionality as power-split device is evaluated.

Recent progress of widebandgap semiconductor switching devices enabled extremely high-frequency operation of power converters owing to their ultrafast switching capability. Fast switching may cause large switching noise at the common source inductance, which may increase the switching loss and lead to false triggering. Therefore, measurement of the common source inductance is often intensely required in practical design of fast switching power converters. However, measurement of the common source inductance is difficult, because 1) the wiring path hidden beneath the molded package significantly contributes to this inductance, 2) the mutual inductance between the gating circuit and the power circuit also contributes to this inductance, and 3) this inductance cannot be defined as the stray inductance of a loop wiring path. These difficulties are addressed in this paper by proposing a novel measurement method of the common source inductance. The proposed method is applicable to already-mounted power circuits. In addition, the proposed method offers a straightforward measurement procedure with common instruments, such as a signal generator, an oscilloscope, and voltage and current probes. Along with the measurement principle, this paper also presents an experiment to evaluate the proposed method.

This paper describes a silicon carbide pulse width modulation (PWM) signal generator in the 1.2 μm HiTSiC CMOS process developed by Raytheon Systems Ltd. The design features a 6-b binary input, which allows for setting a system's duty cycle. The results presented in this paper utilize a field programmable gate array board in the test setup to dynamically set the duty cycle by controlling each bit. A control current is also available to give the user added flexibility for tuning the duty cycle. Experimental results show the duty cycle range of the PWM generator to be between 4.7% and 95.2% at 400 °C. Sustained operation of the circuit is demonstrated over a period of 50 h at 300 °C. Finally, the PWM generator is evaluated in the operation of a boost converter.

This paper proposes a family of soft-switching bidirectional converters. In many applications, the bidirectional converters operate over a wide range of duty cycle and load variations. In the proposed converters, in order to extend the zero-voltage switching operation range, two supplemental voltage sources utilizing passive components are implemented in the auxiliary circuit. By using this method, the soft-switching features are ensured for an extensive range of the converter duty cycles. This is achieved independent of the output power value or the converter operation mode, and so, soft switching is ensured within the entire converter operating region. In these converters, all semiconductors components are soft switched, and the auxiliary circuit does not contribute to the complexity of the control circuit. Also, no extra voltage stress exists on the main switches and the voltage stress on the auxiliary switches is lower than the main switches voltage stress. In this paper, the proposed bidirectional buck/boost converter is analyzed and to confirm the feasibility of the proposed method, experimental results of a 150-W prototype converter are presented.

One technique which may be employed in certain types of sensing application is the phase-sensitive or lock-in method. Since this method essentially trades off longer measurement time for a greater accuracy, it is sometimes necessary to capture samples over a long time period to ensure sufficient stability in the calculated parameter estimate. This may adversely affect safety-critical systems, and some method of determining the relative stability of the measured parameter is needed to permit this useful approach to be more widely employed. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a novel entropy-based method for ascertaining stability. The contributions of this paper are to first highlight the need for a convergence measure which is reliable, automatic, and easily computed; second, we propose one such measure, and place it on a theoretical footing; finally, we give results both with simulated Gaussian noise having a typical sensor power spectrum, as well as experimental results using the type of optical sensor which would benefit from the proposed method. It is demonstrated that this approach produces a reliable asymptotic figure for convergence, both under simulated noise conditions as well as with real measurements in the field.

Extended research on the design and development of a smart nitrate sensor for monitoring nitrate concentration in surface and groundwater are reported in this paper. The developed portable sensing system consists of a planar interdigital sensor, associated electronics, instrumentation, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy based analysis. The system is capable of measuring nitrate concentrations in the range of 0.01–0.5 mg/L in ground and surface water. This paper extends our earlier work by including a temperature compensation capacity within the sensor. WiFi-based Internet of Things (IoT) has been included, making it a connected sensing system. The system is capable of sending data directly to an IoT-based web server, which will be useful to develop distributed monitoring systems in the future. The developed system has the potential to monitor the impact of industrial, agricultural, or urban activity on water quality, in real time.

This paper presents a method for an online real-time electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurement of batteries using closed-loop control of power converter. Unlike the previously proposed method which allows the measurement of the ac impedance for a single frequency, the presented method in this paper allows for obtaining the EIS for a spectrum of frequencies by using the information included in a single perturbation cycle, or a few cycles of perturbation to obtain a more accurate EIS with a very wide frequency range. This will result in faster EIS measurement for a spectrum of frequencies and under the same battery operating conditions. The presented method utilizes closed-loop control operation for the EIS measurement functionality, which allows for better control of the output voltage and for upgrading the concept to be able to achieve no added perturbation ripple at the output of the system. The presented online real-time EIS measurement method utilizes a power converter with closed-loop control in order to create an output voltage step-function perturbation at a given frequency to generate battery voltage and current responses. By applying Fourier analysis to these responses, an EIS can be obtained for a range of frequencies equal or higher than the perturbation frequency of the step function. In addition, this paper presents a method to eliminate the added perturbation ripple when two or more power converters are used. The theoretical basis and experimental prototype results are provided to illustrate and validate the presented method.