Comparative Study Between Finite Control Set Model Predictive Control and Digital Sliding-Mode Control for the Reduction of Current Harmonics in Six-Phase PMSM Drives

Asymmetrical six-phase permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) drives are a promising candidate for electric transportation systems, offering inherent fault tolerance. However, one of the key challenges in developing high-performance control strategies for these systems is suppressing undesirable circulating currents that increase the machine losses. Hence, this paper compares two non-linear control strategies, namely finite control set model predictive control (FCS-MPC) and digital sliding-mode control (DSMC), to address this issue. Besides providing an excellent dynamic performance and robustness to parameter mismatch errors, both control strategies aim to minimize the circulating current harmonics, which are mainly due to deadtime effects and back-EMF harmonics in six-phase PMSM drives. Simulation results obtained with MATLAB/Simulink® are presented in this paper to compare and validate the performance of both control strategies.