A Fractional Order Controller for Sensorless Speed Control of an Induction Motor

Agriculture activities are completely dependent upon energy production worldwide. This research presents sensorless speed control of a three-phase induction motor aided with an extended Kalman filter (EKF). Although a proportional integral (PI) controller can ensure tracking of the rotor speed, a considerable magnitude of ripples is present in the torque generated by a motor. Adding a simple derivative to have a proportional integral derivative (PID) action can cause a further increase in ripple magnitude, as it allows the addition of high-frequency noise in the system. Therefore, a fractional-order-based PID control is presented. The proposed control scheme is applied in a closed loop with the system, and simulation results are compared with the PID controller. It is evident from the results that the fractional order control not only ensures 20 times faster tracking, but ripple magnitude in torque was also reduced by a factor of 50% compared to that while using PID and ensures the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.