Compressor control system for a portable ventilator
First Claim
1. A method for controlling a portable ventilator comprising:
- obtaining one or more analog sensor signals having an amplitude related to an angular position of a rotor of a brushless DC (BLDC) motor;
computing an angular position of said rotor from said analog sensor signals;
computing an angular speed from said angular position;
applying said angular speed in a speed control servo for said BLDC motor; and
driving a compressor of a portable ventilator with said BLDC motor.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A method and apparatus for controlling a brushless DC (BLDC) motor over a wide range of angular speeds is presented. Analog magnetic sensors provide continuous signal measurements related to the rotor angular position at a sample rate independent of rotor angular speed. In one embodiment, analog signal measurements are subsequently processed using an arctangent function to obtain the rotor angular position. The arctangent may be computed using arithmetic computation, a small angle approximation, a polynomial evaluation approach, a table lookup approach, or a combination of various methods. In one embodiment, the BLDC rotor is used to drive a Roots blower used as a compressor in a portable mechanical ventilator system.
145 Citations
35 Claims
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1. A method for controlling a portable ventilator comprising:
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obtaining one or more analog sensor signals having an amplitude related to an angular position of a rotor of a brushless DC (BLDC) motor;
computing an angular position of said rotor from said analog sensor signals;
computing an angular speed from said angular position;
applying said angular speed in a speed control servo for said BLDC motor; and
driving a compressor of a portable ventilator with said BLDC motor. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A portable ventilator apparatus comprising:
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a brushless DC (BLDC) motor;
a compressor within a portable ventilator, said compressor driven by said BLDC motor;
a plurality of sensors providing a plurality of analog signals representative of an angular position of said BLDC motor;
a computation circuit configured to compute said angular position and a speed of said BLDC motor from said plurality of analog signals; and
a speed control servo for driving said angular speed to a command speed. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24)
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25. A method for controlling an electric motor comprising a plurality of analog sensors sensing a magnetic flux associated with rotation of a rotor, said method comprising
sampling the outputs of said plurality of analog sensors to obtain a plurality of digitized sensor signals, said sampling occuring at a constant sample rate; -
subtracting a first digitized signal associated with a first sensor from a second digitized signal associated with a second sensor to obtain a first sinusoidal value related to an angular position of said rotor, said first sensor and said second sensor offset from each other by 180 degrees;
deriving said angular position from said first sinusoidal value;
deriving said angular speed from said angular position; and
applying said derived angular speed to a speed control servo to drive said rotor to a desired angular speed. - View Dependent Claims (26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32)
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33. A method of calibrating a speed servo comprising an electric motor having a magnet attached to a rotor shaft and a plurality of pairs of opposing analog sensors positioned in a circle adjacent to said magnet, said method comprising:
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rotating said rotor shaft at a constant speed;
for each pair of opposing analog sensors, subtracting a digitized sensor signal of a first analog sensor from a digitized sensor signal of a second analog sensor to obtain a sinusoidal signal; and
for each quadrant, determining a plurality of coefficents of a polynomial equation fitted to a plurality of said sinusoidal signals. - View Dependent Claims (34, 35)
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Specification