Sensorless Control for

Electric Motors
Yang Hu
Tejas Bhandare
University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816

Outline

1)Advantages of Sensorless Control

2)Methods of Sensorless Control
3)Simulation Model of EKF Sensorless Control System

Why Sensorless?

Motor control needs feedback information like rotor

position and speed, etc.
Mechanical sensors increases instability and cost of the
system
Sensorless control no mechanical sensors
Simplicity
Lower cost

Position Estimation

Back EMF
The rotating rotor will induce a voltage in the winding,
which
hi h can b
be d
detected
t t d and
d used
d tto estimate
ti t th
the rotor
t
position
Suitable for mid-high
mid high speed
speed. At low speed
speed, back EMF
voltage is too small that the signal to noise ratio is too
low.
Signal injection
Inject some voltage or current signals (usually high
frequency) into the motor and using correspondent
signals to detect rotor position

Back EMF
The induced voltage
g
is dependent on the
rotor speed
By measuring current
and voltage of the
stato windings,
stator
indings the
back EMF information
can be obtained

Model reference adaptive system

Two
o models,
ode s, o
one
e is
s for
o
estimation, one is the real
model
Every state variable in the
fi t model
first
d l iis observable
b
bl
Only current and voltages of
the real motor model is
observable
Compare the two models
and adjust the estimation
model
Highly dependent on
parameter accuracy

State Observer or Kalman filter

Dynamic equation of state variables and output equation

x Ax Bu

y Cx

Use some iteration to approach the real position/speed

Signal Injection

Implementation

Read some literature and implemented a PMSM

sensorless control system in Simulink
Extended Kalman filter is used for estimation. This is a
kind of observer method.
The estimated rotor position and speed is used as
feedback to control the motor

Kalman Filter

System

State variables and PMSM dynamic equation

x g ( x )

=L/R

Assume Ld = Lq = L .

System

Observable variables are d-q currents. Use them as output

vector

Kalman Filter

Estimate state variables of next time step, then calculate

the error covariance matrix, and also the error of
estimation use them to correct the estimation and update
estimation,
the coefficients

Traditional observer:

Simulation System

Extended Kalman Filter

EKF Sensorless control

Successfully tracking the stroke without a sensor, and controlling well.

References

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d
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ii
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p
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