IEEE

Keynote Speakers

Keynote Session 1 (Sept 9)

Prof. S.K. Sul (SNU, Korea), “Application of Sensorless Drive from Automotive to Home Appliance”

Prof. S. Bolognani (University of Padova, Italy), “Convergence and Robustness Properties of Rotor Position Estimation by HF Voltage Injection in IPM and Reluctance Synchronous Motor Drives”

Keynote Session 2 (Sept 10)

Prof. M. Hinkkanen (Aalto University, Finland), “Sensorless Plug and Play Control of Industrial Drives”

Seung-Ki Sul – Seoul National University, Korea

Application of sensorless drive
from automotive to home appliance

Since the first sensorless drive for general purpose IPMSM was commercialized by Yaskawa Electric Co. from 2008, the sensorless drive has been applied in many areas from automotive to home appliance. Several tens of million units of washing machine based on sensorless drive of PM motor has been used worldwide for last 5 years. Also drive system for oil pump as an auxiliary drive of hybrid electric vehicle has used sensorless control for last 10 years. And in soon Integrated Starter-Generator (ISG) machine in vehicle will be driven by high frequency injection sensorless drive where enough dynamics of control under severe magnetic saturation of ISG should be guaranteed.

In this speech, the application examples of sensorless drive, especially permanent magnet motor drive, will be introduced. The most of the examples are based on the algorithm developed in Power Electronics Lab. of Seoul National University, Korea. To apply sensroless drive, each application has its own challenges. Through last 20 years of my experience of sensorless drive, solutions against the challenges for some sensorless drive cases will be discussed.

Seung-Ki Sul (S’78, M’87, SM’98, F’00) received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1980, 1983, and 1986, respectively. From 1986 to 1988, he was an Associate Researcher with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison. From 1988 to 1990, he was a Principal Research Engineer with LG Industrial Systems Company, Korea. Since 1991, he has been a member of faculty of School of the Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University, where he is currently a Professor. He has published over 160 IEEE journal papers and a total of more than 350 international conference papers in the area of power electronics. He was the program chair of IEEE PESC’06 and general chair of IEEE ECCE-Asia, ICPE, 2011. From 2011 to 2014, he had served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Power Electronics, which is a SCIE registered journal, published by the Korean Institute of Power Electronics (KIPE), Seoul, Korea. For year 2015, he was the president of KIPE. He was recipient of 2015 IEEE Transaction 1st and 2nd paper awards on Industrial Application, simultaneously. He was also recipient of 2016 Outstanding Achievement Award of IEEE Industrial Application Society. He was also selected as the recipient of 2017 Newell award sponsored IEEE PELS. His current research interests include position sensorless control of electrical machines, electric/hybrid vehicles and ship drives, and power-converter circuits based on SiC MOSFET.

Silverio Bolognani – University of Padova, Italy

Convergence and Robustness Properties of Rotor Position Estimation by HF Voltage Injection in IPM and Reluctance Synchronous Motor Drives

Rotor position estimation at zero and low speed operation of Interior PM and reluctance synchronous motors by HF voltage injection exploits the dependency of the stator inductances on the rotor position. This method of estimation injects voltage signals superimposed to the fundamental (power) voltages commanded by the current controllers and evaluate the position dependent inductances from the measured HF stator currents. The method was introduced in the 90’ mainly through the seminal papers by R. D. Lorenz and S. K. Sul. Since then, many studies have been performed on this topic in order to understand deeply the principle and to enhance the overall performance of the algorithm. Iron saturation and airgap harmonics effects are among the issues more investigated. Today, rotor position (and speed) estimation of salient rotor machines is ready to be transferred to industrial applications.

After a description of the principle, the keynote will describe estimation convergence conditions and robustness properties in real operating conditions; presentation is supported by simulation and experimental results. Hints for the design of the estimator will be given.  Extension to other different synchronous motors will be also discussed.


Silverio Bolognani
(M’98, SM’16, F’19) received the Laurea degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy, in 1976. In the same year, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering of that University, where he was involved in the analysis and design of thyristor converters and synchronous motor drives. Successively he carried out researches about the design and control of motor drives for land and marine propulsion, energy generation and conversion,  home appliances, automotive, industry, etc.. He has been and is principal investigator of several research contracts with industries, as well as research projects funded by national and European Institutions. He is author of three patents and more than 250 international publications on electric machines and drives. He has given seminars and invited presentations in international conferences and foreign universities. Now he is mainly involved in drive sensorless and predictive control projects. He is of the Scientific Committee of national and international conferences and associations, reviewer of international scientific journals and evaluator of research projects in national and international programmes. He was Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering from 2001 to 2008, member of the Scientific Committee of the University of Padova from 2004 to 2008, vice-Rector for the Research from 2009 to 2015. His teaching activity at the University of Padova dealt with courses of Electromagnetic fields and Electrical circuit theory and, later, with Electric traction, Electric drives, Design of electric machines, Industrial electrical applications.

Marko Hinkkanen – Aalto University, Finland

Sensorless Plug-and-Play Control of Industrial Drives

Induction machines still dominate in industrial applications, but synchronous reluctance machines (SyRMs) and PM-SyRMs are becoming more popular due to their higher torque density and efficiency. For cost saving reasons, industrial drives are typically required to be sensorless and their start-up process should be quick and easy. Ideally, any unknown AC motor can be plugged into a general-purpose inverter, which first automatically identifies the motor model with minimal user intervention, then configures the control system based on the identified model, and finally runs the motor in an optimal manner. Sensorless induction motor drives with these kind of plug-and-play features have been commercially available for the last 20 years, but suitable methods for SyRMs and PM-SyRMs are just emerging. This presentation discusses the state-of-the-art, challenges, and future trends of sensorless plug-and-play control from the perspective of industrial drives (but many aspects are applicable to traction drives as well).

Marko  Hinkkanen (M’06, SM’13) received the M.Sc.(Eng.) and D.Sc.(Tech.) degrees in electrical engineering from the Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. He is an Associate Professor with the School of Electrical Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo. He has authored or co-authored more than 120 technical papers (of which more than 40 are in IEEE journals) and he has several patents. His research interests include control systems, electric drives, and grid-tied converters. Dr. Hinkkanen was a General Co-Chair for the 2018 IEEE 9th International Symposium on Sensorless Control for Electrical Drives (SLED). He was the co-recipient of the 2016 ICEM Brian J. Chalmers Best Paper Award and the 2016 and 2018 IEEE IAS Industrial Drives Committee Best Paper Awards. He is an IEEE Senior Member and an Editorial Board Member of IET Electric Power Applications.