290 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 25, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2010
Sensorless Control of Surface-Mount
Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motors
Based on a Nonlinear Observer
Junggi Lee, Student Member, IEEE, Jinseok Hong, Student Member, IEEE, Kwanghee Nam, Member, IEEE,
Romeo Ortega, Fellow, IEEE, Laurent Praly, and Alessandro Astolfi, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—A nonlinear observer for surface-mount permanent-
magnet synchronous motors (SPMSMs) was recently proposed by
Ortega et al. (LSS, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France, LSS Internal
Rep., Jan. 2009). The nonlinear observer generates the position
estimate
ˆ
θ via the estimates of sin θ and cos θ. In contrast to
Luenberger-type observers, it does not require speed information,
thus eliminating the complexity associated with speed estimation
errors. Further, it is simple to implement. In this study, the non-
linear observer performance is verified experimentally. To obtain
speed estimates from the position information, a proportional-
integral (PI) tracking controller speed estimator was utilized. The
results are good with and without loads, above 10 r/min.
Index Terms—Motor drives, nonlinear estimation, observers,
permanent magnet machines, permanent magnet motors.
I. INTRODUCTION
P
OSITION information is required for field orientation con-
trol of permanent-magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs).
In some applications, installing position sensors is troublesome.
For instance, in some vacuum pumps, it is not possible to extend
the motor shaft out of the motor housing due to sealing prob-
lems. In crane and elevator applications, the distance between
the motor and inverter is so large that sensor signal attenuation
and noise interference are high. In some household equipments
such as refrigerators and air conditioners cost constraints stymie
the use of speed sensors. The aforementioned problems moti-
vated the development of sensorless algorithms for PMSMs, for
which numerous works have been published.
Manuscript received January 20, 2009; revised March 30, 2009 and May 15,
2009. Current version published February 12, 2010. Recommended for publi-
cation by Associate Editor J. O. Ojo.
J. Lee, J. Hong, and K. Nam are with the Department of Electrical En-
gineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) Uni-
versity, Pohang 790-784, Republic of Korea (e-mail: baabu@postech.ac.kr;
jinsuk00@postech.ac.kr; kwnam@postech.ac.kr).
R. Ortega is with the Laboratoire des Signaux et Syst
`
emes, Supelec, 91192
Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France (e-mail: ortega@lss.supelec.fr).
L. Praly is with the Centre Automatique et Syst
`
emes, Ecole de Mines des de
Paris, 77305 Fontainebleau, France (e-mail: praly@ensmp.fr).
A. Astolfi is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, U.K., and also with the Diparti-
mento di Informatica, Sistemi e Produzione (DISP), University of Rome “Tor
Vergata,” 00133 Rome, Italy (e-mail: a.astolfi@ic.ac.uk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2009.2025276
Sensorless techniques for PMSMs are broadly classified into
three types: motion electromotive force (EMF), inductance, and
flux linkage [2]. Matsui [3] pioneered the area of sensorless con-
trols for PMSMs with position- and speed-update algorithms
based on current errors, which originated from coordinate mis-
alignments. Ogasawara and Akagi [14] derived angle estimates
by utilizing the dependence of inductance on the rotor posi-
tion when the rotor has saliency. Tomita et al. [4] introduced a
disturbance observer for an EMF-based estimator. Corley and
Lorenz [5] proposed a sensorless control that operated at zero
speed with a high-frequency current injection and a heterodyne
filtering technique. Aihara et al. [6] combined a signal injection
technique with a back EMF-based position estimation method.
Nahid-Mobarakeh et al. [8] studied the influence of measure-
ment errors and inverter irregularities on the performance of
the sensorless control. Xu and Rahman [10], Liu et al. [12],
and Chen et al. [7] used adaptive sliding-mode observers, and
Bolognani et al. [11] applied the extended Kalman filter and
proposed guidelines for choosing noise covariance matrices.
Bianchi et al. [24] compared two signal injection methods for
zero-speed rotor position detection.
It is widely recognized that back-EMF-based methods per-
form well for middle- and high-speed applications. However, the
major drawback is that they behave poorly at standstill and in the
low-speed region. Further, they are sensitive to inherent motor
torque ripple and noises. However, with high-frequency signal
injection methods, full-torque zero-speed operation is feasible.
Solsona et al. [20] used a nonlinear observer along with non-
linear coordinate transformation for surface-mount permanent-
magnet synchronous motor (SPMSM) and load dynamics. How-
ever, their state contains speed variable and the transformed
equations are complex. Jansson et al. [21] utilized d-axis cur-
rent in proportion to q-axis current to reduce the effect of stator
resistance variation, and showed stable performances in starting
and speed reversal.
Recently, Ortega et al. [17] established some theoretical prop-
erties of a nonlinear observer for SPMSM. Instrumental to our
development was the use of a new state variable representation
of the motor dynamics [18]. The proposed observer used the
flux linkage as the new state variable and the speed dependence
was eliminated. The main interest of the observer of [17] is
its simplicity, which makes it a suitable candidate for practical
implementation. In this paper, a sensorless controller with the
nonlinear observer is constructed, and its practical usefulness is
demonstrated.
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