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vector increases into overmodulation mode I, the reference
voltage vector lies outside the hexagon for some portion of the
fundamental period while remaining within the hexagon for
the rest of the period, seen as dashed line in Fig. 2. When the
reference voltage vector is within the hexagon, modulation is
carried out as per the on-times calculated using (4)-(6). On the
other hand, the same equations give unrealistic on-times for the
zero switching state when the reference vector is outside the
hexagon. Since the zero switching state can no more be selected
in this region, modulation is carried out by switching between
the two active switching state vectors. The on-times can be
derived by using the on-time condition during overmodulation.
As no zero vector is switched, the condition
(7)
holds true whenever the modified reference voltage vector is on
the hexagon. Using this condition and (4)-(6), we get
(8)
The required voltage reference is obtained from (8). Sub-
stituting the value of the modified reference voltage from the
above equation in (4), we get
(9)
(10)
(11)
The fundamental component of the modified voltage vector
should be equal to the actual reference vector , where the
actual reference voltage has only the fundamental component. If
modulation is carried out using this technique the voltage gen-
erated on the machine is distorted and follows the modified ref-
erence voltage vector , seen as the hick dark line in Fig. 2.
C. Overmodulation II
Overmodulation mode I achieves its maximum voltage when
the modified reference voltage vector travels along the hexagon
with uniform angular velocity. To increase the modulation index
further, a change in the angle of the modified reference vector
becomes necessary, hence, its angular velocity becomes nonuni-
form. At the end of mode I, the real component of the reference
voltage changes from sinusoid to a piecewise-linear waveform.
After this stage, any further increase in the fundamental compo-
nent of reference voltage is possible only if the area under the
voltage time curve is increased. According to the fundamental
principle of PWM, we try to achieve the equal volt-time area for
both the reference and the switching state voltage vectors. To
achieve a large volt-time area for a switching state vector, one
of the active switching state vectors is held on for a certain dura-
tion. Although this increases the volt-time area, it also changes
the angular velocity of the resultant voltage vector. Hence, the
resultant vector tends to lag behind the reference vector during
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 49, NO.
Fig. 3. Reference voltage space-vector components during mode II. All
magnitudes expressed in per unit.
the hold period. The desired voltage reference given by the long
dashed arc in Fig. 2 moves at a uniform angular velocity; its
magnitude equals and its angle changes uniformly as
, where is the stator field angular velocity, whereas the
output of the prepocessor moves at a nonuniform angular
velocity such that, during the hold period, remains at the ac-
tive vector and at the end of the hold period it jumps to a tra-
jectory along the hexagon. The trajectory along the hexagon is
achieved by modulation as per (9)-(11). The angle for which the
preprocessor output is held at active switching state vector
is called the hold angle . It increases from 0 to as
goes from 0.955 to 1 and is a nonlinear function of the mod-
ulation index, as given in [6]. When the hold angle increases
to , the modulator reaches six-step operation. The voltage
waveform obtained using this method during mode II operation
is shown in Fig. 3. The flat horizontal regions in the alpha com-
ponent of the voltage occur during the hold periods, whereas
the linear time-varying periods occur during overmodulation
along the hexagonal trajectory. Thus, by making the modified
reference voltage vector go along the hexagonal trajectory at a
nonuniform velocity, overmodulation II is achieved.
Another method of overmodulation with current control was
proposed in [2]. As it was realized that the gain of the cur-
rent regulator drops in the overmodulation range, a feedforward
compensation of the modulation index was proposed. The focus
is to ensure the proper working of current controllers in over-
modulation regions for a decrease in the dc-link voltage. The
compensation is essentially an inverse model of the regulator
gain. The model is obtained by applying describing function
technique and is based on the fundamental component of the
voltage. This acts like the simpler form of preprocessor used in
[6]. However, the problem of fast current control in the over-
modulation range still remains.
III. EFFECT OF DISTORTION OF THE REFERENCE VOLTAGE
The voltage space vector which is fed to the motor during
the overmodulation regimes is shown in Fig. 3. The harmonic
analysis of this waveform shows the presence of harmonics of
the order 5th, 7th, 11th, 13th, and so on. The Fourier analysis
of the overmodulation waveforms is given in [10]. The voltage
space vector in the stator coordinates can be expressed as
(12)