Control signal transmission through power supply cables of a 3-phase PWM motor

Modem process control systems often employ accurate position or speed controlled PWM motors, which require feedback data for the drive control loop. Current methods require an independently shielded cable for feedback data transmission. This is due to the fact that high-voltage PWM signals could easily interfere with the feedback signals, which are typically one or more orders of magnitude smaller than typical PWM signals. We propose a "zero-wire" solution, in which the additional feedback cable used is eliminated, and the feedback data is sent simultaneously with the PWM signals in the same motor power conductors. In this study, we first analyzed the characteristics of typical feedback and PWM signals. Additionally, a standard representative motor drive cable was carefully measured and analyzed for its wave transport characteristics. The results lead us to select an RF modulation approach in which we modulate the data signals to 900MHz. The data signals are injected and extracted from the power conductors using feed-through capacitors and high-pass filters. To test the performance of our approach, we build a model system in which simulated PWM signals were applied to a 30m motor power cable fitted with data couplers and 900MHz RF RS232 data modems for modulation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Mendez, Jose A. (Jose Antonio Mendez Alcazar)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chatham M. Cooke.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37203

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37203