Speed Sensorless Control for PMSM Drives Using Extended Kalman Filter

Abstract

In this paper, Sensorless Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) using Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is presented. The previous PMSM drive uses a sensor to measure the motor’s speed. Then the idea is to replace the sensor by using sensorless drives based on the observer. For the conventional observer, it’s only good for low current and low-speed applications. Moreover, it is hard to detect the phase voltage due to the non-existence of neutral wire. Therefore, this project proposes sensorless control using an EKF. This method provides an optional estimation algorithm for the non-linear system that can produce a fast and accurate estimation of state variables. The accurate estimation will reduce the noise and ripple of the system. Additionally, the EKF do not require the information of mechanical parameters and the initial position of the rotor, making the construction is easy and simple. In this paper, the fundamental of the EKF algorithm is explained and the simulation results for different speeds and loads are presented. The noise reduction test is also conducted to measure the flux current with and without the filter. The simulation study is achieved using MATLAB/Simulink to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results of the simulation show that the sensorless PMSM drives using EKF have lower overshoot and faster rise time during start-up conditions and have lower undershoot during the loaded condition. It also can be concluded that the proposed sensorless PMSM drive using EKF has good speed control accuracy and can reduce the current noise.