Implementation and experimental investigation of sensorless speed control with initial rotor position estimation for interior permanent magnet synchronous motor drive

In this paper, a new approach to sensorless speed control and initial rotor position estimation for interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM) drive is presented. In rotating condition, speed and rotor position estimation of IPMSM drive are obtained through an extended Kalman filter (EKF) algorithm simply by measurement of the stator line voltages and currents. The main difficulty in developing an EKF for IPMSM is the complexity of the dynamic model expressed in the stationary coordinate system. This model is more complex than that of the surface PMSM, because of the asymmetry of the magnetic circuit. The starting procedure is a problem under sensorless drives, because no information is available before starting. The initial rotor position is estimated by a suitable sequence of voltage pulses intermittently applied to the stator windings at standstill and the measurement of the peak current values of the current leads to the rotor position. Magnetic saturation effect on the saliency is used to distinguish the north magnetic pole from the south. To illustrate our work, we present experimental results for an IPMSM obtained on a floating point digital signal processor (DSP) TMS320C31/40 MHz based control system.