Predictive Control for Electrical Drives-A Survey

During the last decades several proposals have been made in literature to use predictive control for inverter control-especially in electrical drives. These algorithms are completely different to the recursive but linear predictive algorithms known from information theory, where closed mathematical equations are used (e.g. Kalman-filters). Only few of the presented schemes have been realized in industrial applications so far. After some further progress, however, the advantage of predictive algorithms might lead to an increased number of industrial implementations in the future. Besides the common basic idea - to use the well-known but strongly non-linear behaviour of inverters to precalculate the best switching times - there are many differences in the details of these proposals. This contribution shows similarities and differences and attempts to design a 'family tree' of predictive control algorithms. This might grow to a first step to a theoretical approach to deal with predictive control schemes in a more generalised way.