Experimental Implementation of an Enhanced Field Oriented Control Strategy for Induction Motors Using a Low-Cost ATSAM3X8E Microcontroller

This paper presents a low-cost Micro Controller Unit (MCU) implementation of an enhanced Field Oriented Control (FOC) technique that takes into account the non-linearity of the ferromagnetic material. The algorithm is applied to a three-phase 5.5 kW Induction Motor (IM) and experimentally carried out by means of an ATMEL ATSAM3X8E microcontroller. The effectiveness of the enhanced control strategy is verified by comparing the dynamic performances of the electric drive with those obtained by means of a traditional FOC technique. For this purpose, an experimental test bench is set up for the implementation of the enhanced FOC technique. Finally, the technical and economic features of the simple and flexible implementation by means of the proposed microcontroller are discussed and compared with traditional ones, demonstrating the fact that the adopted system can be successfully adopted for high-performance electric drive applications.