Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74

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Electrical Power and Energy Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijepes

An adaptive sliding-mode observer with a tangent function-based PLL

structure for position sensorless PMSM drives
Shuyi Lin, Weidong Zhang ⇑
School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Key Laboratory of System Control and Information Processing, Ministry of Education, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper proposes a position estimation strategy for the sensorless control of permanent-magnet syn-
Received 17 May 2016 chronous motors (PMSMs) based on an improved sliding-mode observer (SMO) and a tangent function-
Received in revised form 29 October 2016 based phase-locked loop (PLL) structure. The improved SMO adopts a rotor speed-related adaptive feed-
Accepted 5 December 2016
back gain, and is able to derive a flux model-based estimator that contains rotor position and speed direc-
Available online 26 December 2016
tion information. To extract accurate rotor position from the proposed SMO and reduce position
estimation errors in both forward and reverse rotation of the PMSM, a tangent function-based PLL struc-
Keywords:
ture is established. The proposed SMO together with the PLL structure realises a solution to position and
Position estimation
Sliding-mode observer (SMO)
speed estimation for sensorless PMSM drives. Compared with the conventional back electromotive force
Sensorless control (EMF)-based position estimator, the proposed position estimation strategy has advantages of simple
Permanent-magnet synchronous motor design and robust estimation performance at a wider speed range. Effectiveness of the proposed method
(PMSM) has been validated with simulations on virtual platform.
Phase-locked loop (PLL) Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction to disturbances, and low sensitivity to parameter perturbations,

so it is often applied to sensorless PMSM drives [14].
Permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) have been In earlier SMO methods, a signum function is utilised as the
widely used as servo motors in high-dynamic and high-precision sliding-mode switching function. Due to the discontinuous feature
applications, because of their high power density and efficiency. of the signum function, a low-pass filter (LPF) is required to smooth
Field orientation control strategies of these motors require precise the estimated back-EMF signals and position compensation should
knowledge of real-time rotor position and speed, which are nor- be considered because the LPF brings in system phase delay. To
mally measured by mechanical position sensors mounted on rotor reduce the SMO chattering phenomenon and avoid usage of the
shafts, such as shaft encoders, resolvers and Hall sensors [1]. How- LPF, a continuous sigmoid function is introduced to replace the
ever, installing additional sensors will increase size, cost, and signum function [15–17]. Although this method performs well in
mechanical failure probability of the drives, thus limits usage of reducing chattering, two challenges for such SMO remain to be
the PMSM under certain environmental conditions. dealt with. First, magnitude of the back-EMF varies greatly with
To resolve these problems, sensorless control methods using different rotor speeds; at relatively low speed, the induced back-
estimated position and speed of the rotor have been developed EMF values are very small to be accurately estimated [18]. Second,
[2–5]. Since the PMSM back electromotive force (EMF) contains within the full operating speed range, the switching gain for either
information about rotor position and speed, estimation methods signum or sigmoid function-based SMO needs to be sufficiently
based on the back-EMF are widely utilised [6,7]. These methods large to satisfy the Lyapunov stability condition for convergence
mainly include the Kalman filtering method, the model adaptive of estimation errors. High switching gain will in turn cause large
method, the Luenberger state observer, the disturbance observer, chattering of the estimated signals, especially in low speed range
and the sliding mode observer (SMO), etc. [8–13]. Among these [19].
methods, SMO possesses benefits of simple structures, resistance To extract position and speed information within the observed
back-EMF values, a phase-locked loop (PLL) is utilised in many
research works [20–22]. The PLL structure applied in these works,
⇑ Corresponding author at: School of Electronic Information and Electrical which is described as the conventional PLL in this paper, is the one
Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. with an estimation error proportional to sinusoidal function [23]. It
E-mail address: [email protected] (W. Zhang).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2016.12.006
0142-0615/Ó 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
64 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74

should be noted that this conventional PLL loses its accuracy when It can be observed that back-EMF signals contain information of
speed reversal happens to the PMSM. In fact the structure of this both the PMSM rotor electrical position and speed.
PLL inherently requires a normalisation procedure in practice and
the PLL parameters should be re-designed once the PMSM changes 2.2. Conventional SMO
speed direction. Such drawback appearing during speed reversal is
essentially stem from the fact that sign of the back-EMF shape By using mathematical model of PMSM in the a
b reference
function has influence on the sign of the PLL estimation error func- frame, the typical SMO method can be expressed as
tion. This feature due to the PLL structure subsequently limits its 8
applications. To conquer this problem, [24,25] have proposed a < Ls d^ia ¼ v a
Rs^ia
k  sgnð^ia
ia Þ
dt
PLL scheme with its estimation error proportional to a tangent ð3Þ
:L d^ib
¼ v b
Rs^ib
k  sgnð^ib
ib Þ
s dt
function. This particular PLL scheme has later been exploited in
applications such as BLDC control of micro aerial vehicles [26]. where ‘‘ ^ ” denotes the estimation value, k is a positive constant
On the basis of sigmoid switching function, this paper proposes observer gain, and sgn() represents the signum function. Subtract-
an improved SMO with a rotor speed-related adaptive feedback
ing Eq. (2) from (3), and current estimation error ~ið~i ¼ ^i
iÞ, can
gain. A flux model-based position estimator is derived from the
be derived as
proposed SMO, and it is independent of rotor speed. The flux
8
model-based estimator, instead of the observed back-EMF, is used < Ls d~ia ¼
Rs~ia
ðk  sgnð~ia Þ
ea Þ
for position information extraction. As a result of independency of dt
: ð4Þ
rotor speed, the position estimator manage to provide a robust :L d~ib
¼
Rs~ib
ðk  sgnð~ib Þ
eb Þ
s dt
estimation performance within relatively low speed range. To
overcome aforementioned limitations of the conventional PLL, a The sliding surface corresponding to the zero-error manifold is
tangent function-based PLL structure, which has the similar design defined as
principle to the PLL in [24,25], is proposed to meet applications in h iT
which both positive and negative speed of the PMSM is required. S ¼ ½ sa sb T ¼ ~ia ~ib : ð5Þ
Generalised form of such tangent function-based PLL and its esti-
If the SMO gain k is large enough, k > maxðjea j; jeb jÞ, leading
mation error dynamics are summarised and analysed in detail.
The improved SMO together with the proposed PLL structure forms ST  S_ < 0, the estimation errors can converge to S ¼ 0, namely the
the PMSM rotor position and speed estimation solution. Effective- observed values in Eq. (3) can be used to approximate back-EMF
ness of the proposed method is verified with simulations on a of the rotor:
1.1 kW industrial position sensorless PMSM drive.



sgnðsa Þ ^ea
sin hr
The rest of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2 first k ¼ ¼ wr kaf : ð6Þ
introduces the conventional sigmoid function-based SMO, fol- sgnðsb Þ ^eb cos hr
lowed by a detailed inspection of its properties, and then the
However, the discontinuous property of the signum function
improved SMO method is presented. Section 3 analyses limitations
causes large ripples in back-EMF estimation results. To reduce
of the conventional PLL, and establishes the tangent function-
chattering phenomenon of the SMO and exempt LPF from the sys-
based PLL structure. Section 4 illustrates simulation results of the
tem, a continuous sigmoid function is used to replace sgn(). The
proposed estimation solution. Finally, a conclusion closes the
sigmoid function is defined as
paper.

2
FðsÞ ¼
1 ð7Þ
2. SMO design for the PMSM ð1 þ e
as Þ

where a is a positive adjustable parameter. The same sliding mani-

2.1. Dynamic model of a non-salient PMSM
fold S in (5) is selected and the conventional sigmoid-function based
SMO can be rewritten as
Assuming that the PMSM has symmetrical windings, system
8
dynamics of a PMSM under rotational d
q reference frame can < Ls d^ia ¼ U a
Rs^ia
kFðsa Þ
be expressed as dt
: ð8Þ
" #
:L d^ib
¼ U b
Rs^ib
kFðsb Þ

 

vq Rs þ Lq dtd wr Ld iq wr kaf
s dt

¼ þ ð1Þ
vd
wr Lq Rs þ Ld dtd id 0
2.3. Design of the improved sigmoid function-based SMO
where dtd is the derivative operator; v d ; v q are the d-axis and q-axis
stator voltages, respectively; id ; iq are the d-axis and q-axis stator To verify stability of the SMO in Eq. (8), a Lyapunov function
currents, respectively; Lq and Ld are the inductances of d; q axes, sat- based on the sliding surface S is selected as
isfying Ld ¼ Lq ¼ Ls for non-salient PMSMs; Rs is the stator-winding
1 T
resistance; wr is the rotor electrical speed, and kaf is the flux linkage V¼ S S: ð9Þ
2
produced by permanent magnets.
Using the inverse Park transformation, the non-salient PMSM Differentiating V with respect to time gives
model in the stationary a
b reference frame is presented as

V_ ¼ ST S_
va 

ia



d ia ea Rs  2 
¼ Rs þ Ls þ ð2Þ ¼
s þ s2b
vb ib dt ib eb Ls a
1 ð10Þ
where v a ; v b are the a-axis and b-axis stator voltages, respectively; þ ½ ea
kFðsa Þ   sa
ia ; ib are the a-axis and b-axis stator currents, respectively, and hr is
Ls
the rotor electrical position. ea and eb represent the back-EMF of 1 
þ eb
kFðsb Þ  sb :
a-axis and b-axis, satisfying ea ¼
wr kaf sin hr and eb ¼ wr kaf cos hr . Ls
 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74 65

Based on the Lyapunov stability theory, V_ 6 0 should be guar- From Eqs. (12) and (13), it is known that under constant bound-
anteed to satisfy stability conditions for the estimation errors. In ary layer, the steady-state error depends on wr , with the error
this case, k ought to be larger than maxðeab Þ=FðsÞ to meet V_ 6 0. being smaller at lower speed. So, theoretically, the SMO based on
It should be noted that FðsÞ 2 ð0; 1Þ, thus k selected as a constant sigmoid function can perform effectively within relatively low
value larger than maxðjea j; jeb jÞ as proposed in [17] does not guar- speed range. However, in real industrial practice, compared to
antee that sliding motion will asymptotical stabilise at zero in observation results at medium and high speed range, the magni-
finite time. tude of observed back-EMF is very small to be accurately measured
As shown in Fig. 1, there exists a boundary layer d of S before at low speed. Also, the back-EMF magnitudes will vary with the
FðsÞ grows to either
1 or 1. In this case, the boundary layer is also changing rotor speed wr , thus the observed values are noisy.
To overcome these problems and fully utilise the advantage of
the tracking error boundary layer for S ¼ ^i
i. The region within
sigmoid switching function, an improved SMO is designed as
the tracking error boundary represents a set, jSj 6 d, in which the
shown in Fig. 2.
final error dynamics of the sliding motion will reside. When the
In the new SMO, a speed-related adaptive feedback gain ‘ is
observer gain k > maxðjea j; jeb jÞ is chosen, only attractiveness of
adopted as
the boundary layer can be guaranteed.
When the value of S slides into the boundary layer, under equi- ‘ ¼ jwr j þ n ð14Þ
librium condition where S_ ¼ d ½^ia
ia ; ^ib
ib  ¼ 0, it can be
T
dt
where n is a relatively small constant to prevent ‘ becoming zero at
deducted that zero speed. Current observer in Fig. 2 becomes
" # 8
2 < Ls d^ia ¼ v a
Rs^ia
‘k  Fð^ia
ia Þ
Rs  S ¼ eab
k
1 ; ð11Þ dt
; ð15Þ
1 þ e
aS
ab :L d^ib
¼ v b
Rs^ib
‘k  Fð^ib
ib Þ
s dt

1 k þ eab
Rs  S and the back-EMF values are estimated as

a¼ ln : ð12Þ


S k
eab þ Rs  S ^ea ðjwr j þ nÞ  kFðsa Þ
¼ : ð16Þ
According to Eq. (6), amplitude of the back-EMF can be obtained ^eb ðjwr j þ nÞ  kFðsb Þ
with respect to the electrical rotor speed:
Since maxðjea j; jeb jÞ ¼ jwr jkaf , on the basis of Eqs. (10) and (16),
maxðjea j; jeb jÞ ¼ jwr jkaf ; ð13Þ it can be deduced that switching gain k selected as k ¼ kaf is able to
satisfy the Lyapunov stability condition for the improved sliding-
hence trade-off between adjustable slope a, observer gain k and mode observer. It can be seen in Fig. 2 that instead of using
electrical rotor speed wr , can be analysed. back-EMF signals to extract rotor position and speed information,
It is known from both the mathematical expression of FðsÞ and new observed values F eq
a ; F eq
b are introduced for the task
Fig. 1 that width of the boundary layer d is directly influenced by
the slope a. A small slope a can reduce chattering in estimated val- 1
F eq ¼ e
ues, yet results in a large boundary layer. Meanwhile, d becomes ðjwr j þ nÞ

 ð17Þ
wider with an increase of the rotor speed wr , and this guarantees 1
sin hr
the response time for switching dynamics. Since the arithmetical ¼  wr kaf :
ðjwr j þ nÞ cos hr
calculation speed of sigmoid function is relatively slow compared
to signum function, width of the boundary layer is better to be kept If n is small enough and the rotor is rotating towards the positive
constant, i.e. slope a is selected as a constant value, in practice. It is direction,
worth noting that for exponential function e
as , when the value of


sin hr
a  s increases from 0 to 5, e
as decays to less than 1% of its initial F eq ¼ kaf ; ð18Þ
cos hr
value. This 1% threshold can be considered sufficient to assume
that the function has decayed to zero, for practical purposes. and if the speed reversal happens,
Therefore, once the electrical parameters of the controlled motor


sin hr
is obtained, a proper range of value for SMO parameter a can be F eq ¼
kaf : ð19Þ
deduced considering Eq. (12), S 6 d and a 6 5=d.
cos hr

Fig. 1. Illustration of the estimation error sliding motion of the sigmoid function-based SMO.
66 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74

Fig. 2. Block diagram of the improved SMO strategy.

It is clear that F eq contains the same rotor position information as respectively; K p and K I are the proportional gain and integral gain
the back-EMF does, so it can be utilised to estimate the rotor posi- for a PI regulator. Estimation error of the electrical position is rep-
tion. The improved SMO strategy has three advantages compared to resented by
the conventional SMO. First, switching gain for the improved obser-
ver, k  ‘, is easy to determine in practice with Eq. (14) and k P kaf . eðtÞ ¼
ea  cos ^hr
eb  sin ^hr
ð21Þ
In conventional SMO, observer gain k is a constant number, and ¼ E  sinðhr
^hr Þ / sinðhr
^hr Þ
needs pre-chosen to be sufficiently large to guarantee the SMO sta-
where E ¼ wr kaf . When e converges to zero under adjustment of the
bility. However, a large value of k will increase the chattering of the
system, especially in low speed range. In the proposed SMO, with PI regulator, ^
hr approaches to actual rotor position hr . Although this
adaptive switching gain design, the chattering problem due to high PLL scheme works effectively in some cases, there are two weak-
switching gain in conventional SMO will be improved. Second, con- nesses of this method that seldom mentioned in other works and
ventional SMO method applies the estimated back-EMF to further we believe should be emphasised.
extract position information while magnitudes of the back-EMF
are speed-related, which will affect position estimation perfor- 3.1.1. Different estimation errors of forward/reverse speed
mance. In the improved SMO, because of the constant magnitude Assuming that the PLL operates at a frequency much higher
of F eq , the consistency and robustness of the position estimation than the update frequency of its input, in positive speed range,
performance can be guaranteed. Third, since the magnitudes of i.e. forward rotation of motor, the non-linear dynamics of the PLL
F eq contains information about rotor flux linkage, further applica- system can be represented as

tions based on the improved SMO can be developed such as to anal- e_ h ¼ ew
yse magnetising level of the permanent magnet. ð22Þ
e_ w ¼
K p E  cosðeh Þ  ew
K I E  sinðeh Þ

3. Rotor position and speed extraction where eh ¼ hr
^ ^ r . Phase portrait of the system is
hr ; ew ¼ wr
w
shown in Fig. 4. Point ð0; 0Þ; ðp; 0Þ are three equilibrium points
Rotor electrical position can be estimated directly from of the system. Among the three equilibrium points, ð0; 0Þ is the
observed ea;b values with an arctangent function stable point and the other two are saddle points [27]. In this situa-
tion, trajectories in the system state plane will approach to the ori-
^hr ¼
arctanð^ea =^eb Þ; ð20Þ gin, namely position and speed estimation error will converge to
zero, which satisfies the estimation purpose.
and the electrical rotor speed is derived as w^ r ¼ d^
hr =dt. However,
However, with negative rotor speed, i.e. speed reversal of the
the existence of noises and harmonic components within the
motor, wr !
wr results in e !
e. If values of K p and K I are kept
observed signals may affect position and speed estimation accuracy.
To improve the estimation results, a phase-locked loop (PLL) is gen-
erally used for position information extraction in PMSM sensorless 4
control applications.
3
3.1. Conventional PLL for rotor position extraction
2
Block diagram of the conventional PLL is shown in Fig. 3, where
hr and ^hr denote the actual and estimated electrical rotor position, 1
e(w)

−1

−2

−3

−4
−4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 4
e(θ)

Fig. 4. Phase portrait of the conventional PLL system dynamics with positive rotor
Fig. 3. Block diagram of the conventional PLL. speed.
 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74 67

the same as in Eq. (22), dynamic equation of the PLL system

E=150v
changes as follows: E=100v

Magnitude (db)
−60
 E= 50v
e_ h ¼ ew E= 10v
: ð23Þ
e_ w ¼ K p jEj  cosðeh Þ  ew þ K I jEj  sinðeh Þ
−80
Fig. 5 shows the new phase portrait of the PLL system under
speed reversal of the motor. Equilibrium points of the system
remain the same, but the behaviour of the nonlinear system near −100
0 1 2 3 4 5
equilibrium points is changed: (0,0) becomes an unstable point 10 10 10 10 10 10
while ðp; 0Þ and ð
p; 0Þ change into the stable point. This indicates Frequency (Hz)
that when speed reversal happens, trajectories in state plane of the Fig. 6. Magnitude-versus-frequency plot of the conventional PLL system closed-
PLL system will diverge from (0, 0) to reach ð180 ; 0Þ, and cause a loop transfer function.
position estimation error of 180°. Namely, once parameters for the
PI regulator are set, position estimation results of conventional PLL
are only acceptable for one speed direction. When speed direction 3.2. A tangent function-based PLL structure
of the motor changes, estimation errors will be significantly large.
Although this problem can be tackled by rescheduling K p and K I for Though the flux model-based position estimator F eq we pro-
the PI regulator, it is not easy to be managed during real-time prac- posed in Section 2.3 is independent from rotor speed values, its
tice. Hence, the conventional PLL scheme is not suitable for appli- expression is still influenced by the positive and negative speed
cations where both forward and reverse speed of the motor are directions as shown in Eqs. (18) and (19). Emergence of the rela-
required. tively large position estimation errors while using the conventional
PLL is due to the fact that sign of E ðE ¼ wr kaf Þ can affect the sign of
eðtÞ, which further influence the estimation error dynamics of the
3.1.2. Normalisation procedure PLL system [25]. Also, with a constantly changing amplitude of
Close-loop transfer function of the conventional PLL can be the back-EMF entering the PLL system, the normalisation proce-
derived as dure is necessary. To design a suitable structure avoiding such
^hr drawbacks of the conventional PLL, a proper way to prevent the
EK p s þ EK I
GPLL ¼ ¼ : ð24Þ sign and value of E from entering the system should be considered.
hr s2 þ EK p s þ EK I This idea motivates the development of the tangent function-based
Fig. 6 presents the magnitude-versus-frequency plot of Eq. (24) PLL structure.
with different back-EMF amplitudes. The changing rotor electrical Dynamic equations describing the PLL system in (22) and (23) is
speed results in variation of magnitude of E, leading bandwidth of deduced from the expression of eðtÞ. The design principle for a
the PLL varies under system operating frequency, which deterio- proper PLL structure is to remove E from eðtÞ, and this task can
rates system performance and adds difficulties to system parame- be tackled by a generalised PLL structure shown in Fig. 7, where
ters design. eðtÞ is derived in a form of tangent function:
In order to overcome such problem, normalisation of the equiv-
tan hr
tanðm^hr Þ
alent back-EMF should be adopted: eðtÞ ¼ ¼ tanðhr
m^hr Þ: ð26Þ
1 þ tan hr  tanðm^hr Þ
^hr Kps þ KI
G0PLL ¼ ¼ : ð25Þ Here, m is a positive constant, and can be selected as a integer or a
hr s2 þ K p s þ K I fraction number, for instance, in [24,25], m ¼ 1=2. Compared to
sinusoidal function-based PLL structure, namely the conventional
Despite of normalisation effectiveness, such procedure increases PLL, the tangent function-based PLL structure eliminates E (or
calculation complexity. kaf of the improved SMO from Section 2.3) in the error function
eðtÞ. Speed reversal of the motor will not result in sign change of
4
eðtÞ. Therefore, designed PI parameters suits both forward and
reverse speed.
Under the frame of the generalised tangent function-based PLL
3
structure, rotor position and speed estimation errors are defined as
eh ¼ hr
mh^r ; ew ¼ wr
mw
^ r . The corresponding non-linear
2
dynamics for the tangent function-based PLL system can be
1 derived as
e(w)

−1

−2

−3

−4
−4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 4
e(θ)

Fig. 5. Phase portrait of the conventional PLL system dynamics with negative rotor
speed. Fig. 7. Block diagram of the generalised tangent function-based PLL scheme.
68 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74

(
e_ h ¼ ew parameter a of the sigmoid function used in the sliding-mode
; ð27Þ observer is selected as a ¼ 1; m in the generalised tangent
e_ w ¼
mK p  cos21ðeh Þ  ew
mK I  tanðeh Þ
function-based PLL structure is selected as m ¼ 1.
and system dynamics is the same for both forward and reverse Practically, sensorless control of the PMSM via back-EMF esti-
speed. ðeh ; ew Þ ¼ ð0; 0Þ; ðeh ; ew Þ ¼ ðp; 0Þ are still equilibrium points mation methods requires the motor to start in an open-loop con-
for the system. To determine the qualitative behaviour of the sys- figuration, because if the motor is stationary, no back-EMF will
tem near equilibrium points, linearisation of the nonlinear state be generated. In the following simulations, when the performance
equation can be conducted. The Jacobian matrix A for (27) is of the system under closed-loop feedback mode is required, the

 motor will first go through an open-loop starting procedure, during
0 1
Aðeh ; ew Þ ¼ : which the w ^ r and ^
hr in Fig. 8 will not take effect directly. The idea of

2mK p ew cosðeh Þ sinðeh Þ=cos ðeh Þ
mK I =cos ðeh Þ
mK p =cos ðeh Þ
4 2 2
start-up method adopted in the simulations is proposed in [28].
ð28Þ
The process can be divided into 2 parts in accordance with 2 preset
It is worth noting that in this tangent function-based PLL sys- frequency bound. (1) I-f control: The reference frequency f, which
tem, all three equilibrium point are the stable points. A evaluated can be viewed in the form of reference speed of the system, is
at ð
p; 0Þ; ð0; 0Þ, and ðp; 0Þ possesses the same expression as set as a ramp signal starting from 0. Before f reaches its lower

 bound f min , the feedforward position angle h0 , which is used to cal-
0 1
A¼ : ð29Þ culate the Park/Inverse Park transformation for the control strat-

mK I
mK p R
egy, is generated by the reference frequency: h0 ¼ ð2pf Þdt.
 
K p and K I are tuning parameters of the PI regulator, and always Meanwhile, id is set to 0, and iq is set according to the reference fre-
large than 0, thus eigenvalues of A have negative real parts. There- quency. To avoid large motor speed transient during this stage, a

fore, each of the three equilibrium points is a stable focus where relatively small constant value is chosen for iq before f exceeds
neighbourhood trajectories will be drawn to. With proper tuning f min . The SMO and the PLL are activated once the reference fre-
of the PI regulator, estimation error of rotor position can be quency changes from zero. (2) Smooth transition: When the value
attracted to the origin point. of f exceeds f min , the transition to closed-loop sensorless control is

When ðeh ; ew Þ of the tangent function-based PLL system reaches initiated. iq is set to a larger constant, nearly the maximum iq value,
the origin, leading hr
m^ ^ r ¼ 0; the values of real
hr ¼ 0; wr
mw to avoid possible non-ideal conditions such as the load variation.
rotor position and speed are m times the values of estimated posi- Before the frequency reaches to the upper bound f max , a first order
tion and speed. This result should not be neglected during practice lag compensator for the rotor position is utilised to obtain a
because the estimated rotor position and speed have to be scaled smooth transition from h0 to ^ hr . During this stage, angle h is used
properly with the factor m before applying to the motor control for Park/Inverse Park transformation, where h ¼ ^ hr þ hcomp ;
process.
hcomp ¼ ðh0
^
hr Þ=ð1 þ sT s Þ; T s is the time constant of the compen-
Transfer function for the tangent function-based PLL scheme
sator, and is chosen as 0.06 in the simulation. When the reference
can be deducted as
frequency reaches f max , the smooth transition stage is over, hcomp is
^hr Kps þ KI disabled (hcomp ¼ 0), and the estimated speed w ^ r is fed back to the
GPLL ¼ ¼ ; ð30Þ 
hr s2 þ mK p s þ mK I speed control loop to generate the reference current iq .

and it is clear that no normalisation effort is required, which meets

with the statement in [24]. 4.1. Comparison between the conventional SMO and improved SMO
with conventional PLL
4. Simulation results
The conventional SMO refers to the sigmoid function-based
To verify validity of the improved SMO with the tangent sliding-mode observer with constant gain k in Eq. (8), and the
function-based PLL, simulations are run on a 1.1 kW non-salient improved SMO is proposed in Section 2.3. Both SMOs are imple-
PMSM which has a nominal torque of 3 N m and a rated speed of mented with the conventional PLL structure.
3000 rpm. Parameters of the PMSM are listed in Table 1. Fig. 8
shows the control diagram of a sensorless PMSM drive system 4.1.1. Estimation performance in open-loop mode
employing the SMO with PLL for computer simulations. The space Here, the control strategy of the PMSM is implemented with the
vector PWM generation module is employed and executed every feedback of its actual rotor position and speed. The SMO and PLL
50 ls. Given the nominal speed and stator resistance of the PMSM, are working in parallel with the system to testify their estimation
together with the calculation principle proposed in Section 2.3, performance.
First, the rotor reference speed is given, which accelerates from
Table 1
standstill to 20.9 rad/s (200 rpm) in 2 s with load torque
Motor parameters. T L ¼ 1 N m. Performance of the conventional SMO is showed in
Fig. 9(a): the magnitude of observed back-EMF keeps growing with
Parameters Units Values
respect to speed acceleration; errors between actual rotor position
Rated voltage U N V 220 and estimated rotor position varies around 0.04 rad. From simula-
Rated power P kW 1.1
Rated speed nN r/min 3000
tion results, it can be seen that the estimation error of conventional
Voltage constant K e V/krpm 126.97 SMO varies quickly from time to time, which proves the point that
Torque constant K t Nm 1.05 constant observer gain leads to obvious chattering problem at low
Rotational inertia J kgm2 0.0008 speed range. Meanwhile, the magnitude of position estimator F eq
a
Flux of permanent magnet kaf Wb 0.175
and F eq
b are more stable and constantly around 0.175 after the
Stator resistance Rs X 2.875
Stator inductance Ls mH 1.53 starting period, as shown in Fig. 9(b). Position estimation accuracy
Pole pair 4 of the improved SMO performs better than the conventional SMO,
as the errors are smaller and less noisy.
 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74 69

Fig. 8. Block diagram of the sensorless PMSM control system.

Fig. 9. Simulation waveforms with reference speed ramp from 0 to 20.9 rad/s.

Fig. 10 presents the speed estimation results of two SMO strate- Fig. 11(a) presents the speed and position estimation results
gies when the reference speed of the system is a step signal: from 0 obtained by applying the conventional SMO method. Fig. 11(b)
to 6.28 rad/s (60 rpm). Although both SMO strategies are able to shows the control results obtained from the improved SMO. Both
track the reference speed of the rotor, chattering of estimated observer-based control strategies follow the reference speed com-
speed obtained from conventional SMO is obviously larger than mand effectively. It can be seen from Fig. 11(a) and (b) that with
that from the improved SMO. the improved SMO, chattering phenomena of the estimated rotor
Fig. 11 shows two sets of simulation waveforms where the ref- speed is reduced. Namely, dynamics of the improved SMO per-
erence speed wref is a two-phase step signal: first it steps from 0 to forms better, which is the same as the results presented in
52.3 rad/s (500 rpm), and then step to 209.3 rad/s (2000 rpm). Fig. 10. Also, accuracy of the estimated rotor position is guaranteed

8 8
estimated speed (rad/s)

estimated speed (rad/s)

6 6

4 4

2 2

0 0

−2 −2
0 0.4 0.8 1.2 1.6 2 0 0.4 0.8 1.2 1.6 2
time (s) time (s)
(a) Estimated rotor speed of the conventional SMO. (b) Estimated rotor speed of the improved SMO.

Fig. 10. Simulation waveforms with system reference speed step from 0 to 6.28 rad/s.
70 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74

Fig. 11. Simulation waveforms with a two-phase step reference speed.

4.1.2. Estimation performance in closed-loop mode

To observe the sensorless control performance of the system
with conventional SMO and the proposed SMO, a reference speed
for the system is given as shown in Fig. 12. f min and f max are set
to 10 Hz and 20 Hz respectively, which are in accordance with
wref ¼ 62:8 rad/s and wref ¼ 125:6 rad/s.
Fig. 13 presents the performance of the conventional SMO in the
closed-loop sensorless control mode. Before f reaches f max the sys-
tem is operating under the startup procedure. It can be observed
that in the starting phase, the estimation results are far from accu-
rate when comparing with the rotor actual position and speed. It
Fig. 12. System reference speed. takes some time for the conventional SMO to obtain satisfactory
estimation performance. When the system is operating under full
sensorless mode, position estimation errors chatter between
0.05 rad and 0.1 rad.
as the improved SMO has smaller estimation errors than the con-
Fig. 14 refers to the estimation performance of the improved
ventional SMO. Comparison between the estimated speed in
SMO. Despite of existence of unsatisfactory estimation errors dur-
Figs. 10 and 11 verifies the fact that both SMO estimation strategies
ing the starting phase, when comparing to the conventional SMO,
perform better when the system is operating at a relatively high
the estimation performance is improved: position estimation
speed range.
errors are reduced, estimated speed converges faster to the actual

Fig. 13. Simulation waveforms of the conventional SMO with conventional PLL.
 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74 71

Fig. 14. Simulation waveforms of the improved SMO with conventional PLL.

Fig. 15. Simulation waveforms when the reference speed is changed from 157 rad/s to
52.3 rad/s.

speed. Also, chattering noise is lower when system is in the closed- It should be noted that 0.76 rad is the rotor mechanical position
loop feedback mode, which leads to a better reference speed track- error. Since this PMSM has 4 pole pairs, electrical position error
ing performance. is around 3.04 rad which validates our theoretical analysis in Sec-
tion 3.1.1. With such sudden increase of the position estimation
4.2. Performance of the tangent function-based PLL structure error, estimated speed is overly large, and it takes certain amount
of time for the estimated speed converging to the actual speed
Fig. 15 compares the conventional PLL scheme with the tangent again even under the open-loop mode.
function-based PLL scheme in the open-loop mode. System refer- Fig. 15(b) refers to the performance of the improved SMO with
ence speed first maintains at 157 rad/s (1500 rpm), and then the tangent function-based PLL structure. It can be seen that this
reverses to
52.3 rad/s (
500 rpm) at t ¼ 1 s. position estimation solution possesses a stable feature when the
Fig. 15(a) shows the performance of the improved SMO with rotor speed changes from positive to negative. Comparing to
conventional PLL. It can be observed that the estimated rotor posi- Fig. 15(a), the estimated rotor position tracks the actual position
tion tracks the actual position accurately when the PMSM is rotat- accurately under both forward and reverse speed of the motor.
ing under positive speed; however, position estimation loses its Fig. 16 shows the performance of the improved SMO with tan-
accuracy once the rotor speed becomes negative. Position estima- gent function-based PLL estimation strategy under a closed-loop
tion errors reach around 0.76 rad when speed reversal happens. mode. Motor startup procedure is the same as in Section 4.1.2.
72 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74

Fig. 16. Simulation waveforms of the proposed estimation strategy in closed-loop mode.

Fig. 17. System performance when the load torque changes.

Fig. 18. Electromagnetic torque of the motor.

System reference speed is shown in Fig. 16(a). Compare with 4.3. System performance under load torque variation
Fig. 14(a), position estimation errors of the ‘‘improve SMO + tan-
gent function-based PLL” strategy are reduced at the startup per- When the motor is operating in closed-loop mode around
iod. After the system enters the full closed-loop mode, speed 157 rad/s with initial load torque T L ¼ 1 N m, a load torque
tracking performance and accuracy of the estimation results can increase of 2 N m is applied to the system at t ¼ 3 s. Fig. 18(a)
be guaranteed. shows the corresponding electromagnetic torque change of the
 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74 73

Fig. 19. Simulation results when the motor parameter Rs is changed.

Fig. 20. Simulation results when the motor parameter Ls is changed.

system from 2 s to 4 s. Position estimation error obtained by the Fig. 20 shows the performance of the proposed position and
proposed estimation strategy and the rotor speed are present in speed estimation strategy when the inductance of PMSM varies.
Fig. 17(a). When the motor is operating in negative speed range Reference speed for the system is the same as in Fig. 19.
and suffers the same load torque change, corresponding perfor- It can be seen from Fig. 20 that estimation performance varies
mance of the system is presented in Figs. 17(b) and 18(b). with respect to the variation of Ls . Generally, when variation of Ls
stay within 20% of its original value, the estimation strategy per-
forms effective. When Ls increase to 1.5 times of its original value,
4.4. Effectiveness of the proposed method under parameter variation
estimation accuracy of the proposed method can still be guaran-
teed. However, once the inductance drops to half of its original
Fig. 19 shows the performance of the proposed position and
value, estimated rotor speed will not longer be acceptable. Gener-
speed estimation strategy (improved SMO together with tangent
ally, compared to inductance variations, the proposed position and
function-based PLL) when the resistance of PMSM varies. The ref-
speed estimation strategy performs better robustness towards
erence speed for the system is 52.3 rad/s (500 rpm).
resistance variation.
It can be seen from Fig. 19 that when values of Rs varies within
50% of its original value, estimated speed can still converge to the
reference speed. With larger parameter variation, especially when 5. Conclusion
the value of Rs is 50% lower than its original value, robustness of
the proposed estimation strategy will be affected, but the position This paper has proposed an improved sigmoid function-based
errors are still in acceptable range. sliding-mode observer together with a tangent function-based
74 S. Lin, W. Zhang / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 88 (2017) 63–74

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