Comparative Study of sliding mode observers for Sensorless Control of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor Drives

Permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) are increasingly used in high performance variable speed drives of many industrial applications. PMSM has many features, like high efficiency, compactness, high torque to inertia ratio, rapid dynamic response, simple modeling and control, and maintenance free operation. Presence of position sensors presents several disadvantages, such as reduced reliability, susceptibility to noise, additional cost and weight and increased complexity of the drive system. For these reasons, the development of alternative indirect methods for speed and position control becomes an important research topic. Advantages of sensorless control are reduced hardware complexity, low cost, reduced size, cable elimination, increased noise immunity, increased reliability and decreased maintenance. The key problem in sensorless vector control of ac drives is the accurate dynamic estimation of the stator flux vector over a wide speed range using only terminal variables (currents and voltages). The difficulty comprises state estimation at very low speeds where the fundamental excitation is low and the observer performance tends to be poor. Moreover, the noises of system and measurements are considered other main problems. This paper presents a comprehensive study of the different sliding mode observer methods of speed and position estimations for sensorless control of PMSM drives