PMSM Sensorless Control based on Adaptive

Luenberger Observer
2022 37th Youth Academic Annual Conference of Chinese Association of Automation (YAC) | 978-1-6654-6536-6/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/YAC57282.2022.10023763

Zhongyi Zhang, Linghuan Kong, Yifan Wu, Shuang Zhang and Zhijie Liu
School of Intelligence Science and Technology,
University of Science and Technology Beijing,
Beijing 100083, China
and also with Institute of Artificial Intelligence,
University of Science and Technology Beijing,
Beijing 100083, China
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]; [email protected]

Abstract—In this paper, a luenberger observer is designed to estimation strategy of back-EMF observer is widely applied
estimate the rotor position and speed of a sensorless permanent to medium-speed and high-speed operation phases, e.g. EKF
magnet synchronous motor. A neural network (NN) is used to [4], MRAS [5] and SMO [6], [7]. It has been proven that the
improve the adaptability of the permanent magnet synchronous
motor. Firstly, based on the mathematical model of permanent EKF could accurately estimate the system state even if the
magnet synchronous motor in two-phase stationary reference system noises and measurement noises exist in the system,
frame, the general luenberger observer for vector control is which leads to its strong anti-interference ability. However, the
constructed. A phase-locked loop is used to improve the estimated complex design of the EKF and the high computing power
accuracy of the luenberger observer. To deal with the disturbance requirements of controller limit its application occasions. In
problem of load changes and model plant mismatches, neural
networks are used to adjust control parameters in real time [8], a reduced order EKF is designed by reselecting the system
according to the running state of the motor. Simulation results state variables and reconstructing the system state equation.
validate the effectiveness of the presented control scheme. Under the premise of satisfying the control accuracy, the
Index Terms—Permanent magnet synchronous motor, Luen- covariance matrix becomes a constant matrix, which greatly
berger observer, Adaptive control, Phase-locked loop, Neural simplifies the complexity of matrix calculation. Compared
networks
with the EKF which requires large computational costs, the
I. I NTRODUCTION sliding mode observer has good robustness and less compu-
tation. Moreover, the external disturbance has less influence
The permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) have on system stability while the motor enters the sliding modes.
extensive actual applications, including aerospace, transporta- However, the chattering problem caused by the inherent high-
tion and home appliances, owing to its low cost, high speed frequency movement characteristics needs to be improved.
and control convenience. The information of motor speed and To solve this problem partially, reference [9] proposed a
rotor position is important for controlling PMSMs, which can nonlinear observer method using a extended sliding mode
be obtained through installing mechanical sensors on the rotor observer, which extracts the motor speed directly by the
shaft of the motor. However, the installation of sensors leads adaptive control. In addition, some studies have used vari-
to some disadvantages including the increased cost and the ous smooth saturation functions as sliding mode approaching
worse performance of the motor system. Moreover, installing laws to suppress the system chattering, while increasing the
the sensor limits its application in some special occasions. computational pressure of the system. The luenberger observer
Therefore, in order to solve the disadvantage, scholars have has extensive applied to PMSM control for its high estimation
done extensive research on PMSM sensorless control [1-3]. accuracy and fast dynamic response. However, the estimation
According to the various motor speed, the sensorless control accuracy depends largely on motor model.
of PMSMs could be roughly summarized into two types, The back-EMF obtained by the observer is often accompa-
namely control strategy applied to medium and high-speed nied by high-frequency jitter. Therefore, the estimation of the
phases and control strategy applied to low and zero-speed speed and motor angle speed calculated by bringing the back-
operating phases. The high frequency injection method is EMF into the arc-tangent function is not accurate, especially
widely used for low-speed operation phases, and the position when the PMSM runs at low speed. To solve this problem,
This work was supported in part by the Fundamental Research Funds the phase-locked loop is widely applied to improve estimation
for the China Central Universities of USTB under Grant FRF-MP-20-36, accuracy while the back-EMF is uesd for calculating the motor
in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants speed and angle [10].
62061160371, 62073030, 62073031, and U20A20225, and in part by the
Beijing Top Discipline for Artificial Intelligence Science and Engineering, The PMSM is a complicated nonlinear control plant, be-
University of Science and Technology Beijing. cause of the interference of the external harsh working con-

978-1-6654-6536-6/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE 398

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 ditions, the inherent motor parameters change will be caused. Substituting (3) into (2), and differentiating (1), (2) with
In this case, the original parameters of the controller may no respect to time, we have:
longer produce good control performance [11]. And intelligent ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ RS ⎤⎡ ⎤
control has made some achievements in this field [12-16]. Due i̇α − LS 0 − L1S 0 iα
to the adaptability of neural network control to the controlled ⎢ i̇β ⎥ ⎢ 0 −R S
0 − L1S ⎥ ⎢ iβ ⎥
⎢ ⎥=⎢ LS ⎥⎢ ⎥
object, neural networks can be applied to automatically adjust ⎣ėα ⎦ ⎣ 0 0 0 −pn ωr ⎦ ⎣eα ⎦
controller parameters according to actual needs [17]. Nowa- ėβ 0 0 pn ω r 0 eβ
days neural networks have brought new ideas to the PMSM ⎡ 1 ⎤
LS 0  
control. ⎢0 1 ⎥
We present a scheme to enhance the adaptability of the +⎢ LS ⎥ uα (4)
⎣0 0 ⎦ uβ
PMSM to the environment. The observer and controller de-
0 0
signs help to deal with the parameter dependency, sensor
needs and load variation problems caused by the external
conditions. There are two contributions: a) the combination Remark 1: In the state equation of the PMSM (4), the
of a Luenberger observer and a phase-locked loop derives electrical variable changes significantly comparing with the
the position and speed observer, removing the sensor needs mechanical variable. Therefore, it can be considered that the
and improving the estimation accuracy; and b) the controller motor speed does not change in a relatively short period of
based on neural networks could adjust three controller PID time. Therefore, pn ωr in (4) could be considered as a constant.
parameters while the motor is running, which improves the Define the state vector x = [iα , iβ , eα , eβ ]T , input vector
adaptability of the PMSM. u = [uα , uβ ]T , and output vector y = [iα , iβ ]T . And we define
In Section II, we explain the used PMSM model, we design the state matrix A, input matrix B and output matrix C of the
a luenberger observer, and we design a controller based on system as:
RBF neural networks. In Section III, simulation cases are ⎡ ⎤
carried out to validate the effect of the proposed control. −R
LS
S
0 − L1S 0
⎢ 0 −R S
0 − L1S ⎥
Finally, the conclusion is given in Section IV. A=⎢
⎣ 0
LS ⎥,
0 0 −pn ωr ⎦
II. C ONTROL D ESIGN 0 0 pn ω r 0
⎡ 1 ⎤
0  
A. PMSM Modeling LS
⎢0 1 ⎥
B=⎢ LS ⎥ , C = 1 0 0 0
A mathematical model of PMSM is given, and some nec- ⎣0 0⎦ 0 1 0 0
essary variable relationships are also given. 0 0
The stator current and voltage of PMSM, which are denoted
in two-phase static coordinate by iα , iβ , uα and uβ , respec- Then we can obtain a linear time-invariant system Σ0 :
tively, then the PMSM mathematical model: (A,B,C):
         
uα RS 0 iα LS 0 i̇α e
= + + α (1) ẋ = Ax + Bu
uβ 0 RS i β 0 LS i̇β eβ
y = Cx (5)
where LS , RS denote the stator inductance and resistance,
respectively, eα , eβ denote the back electromotive force:
According to the linear time-invariant system (5), we can
    design a luenberger observer:
eα −sin(θr )
= ψ r pn ω r (2)
eβ cos(θr )
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤
where pn is the pole-pairs number, ψr denotes the perma- î˙ α − RS 0 − L1S 0 îα
⎢ ˙ ⎥ ⎢ LS
nent magnet flux linkage. θr , ωr denote the rotor position ⎢ îβ ⎥ ⎢ 0 −R S
0 − L1S ⎥ ⎢ îβ ⎥
⎥⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥=⎣ LS
and motor mechanical speed, respectively, and the following ⎣ê˙ α ⎦ 0 0 0 −pn ωr ⎦ ⎣êα ⎦
relationship holds: ˙êβ 0 0 −pn ωr 0 êβ
⎡ 1 ⎤
θ r = pn ω r t (3) LS 0    
⎢0 1 ⎥
+⎢ LS ⎥ uα + K îα − iα (6)
B. Luenberger Observer ⎣0 0 ⎦ uβ îβ − iβ
The key to sensorless control is the estimation of PMSM 0 0
position and speed. Considering that the back electromotive
force in the above-mentioned PMSM mathematical model con- where îα , îβ denote the estimation of stator current,
tains the information about rotor angle and speed, a luenberger respectively, and êα , êβ denote the estimation of back
observer can be designed based on this model. electromotive force, respectively. K is the error feedback gain

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 matrix:

⎡ ⎤
K1 0
⎢0 K1 ⎥
K=⎢
⎣ K2
⎥
0⎦
0 K2

Theorem 1: The observer (6) is designed for the PMSM

described by (1), The actual state variables can be estimated
by the observer, and the estimation error lim x̃ = 0 can be
t→∞
guaranteed.
Proof: According to (6), the observer could be expressed:

x̂˙ = (A − KC)x̂ + Ky + Bu
Fig. 1. Phase-locked loop structure.
ŷ = Cx̂ (7)

Define the estimation error as:

C. Controller design based on RBF neural network
x̃ = x − x̂ (8) In this control scheme, the field-oriented control is used
to change the amplitude and phase of PMSM stator current,
Differentiating (8), we have:
which can control the electromagnetic torque and flux linkage
x̃˙ = ẋ − x̂˙ respectively, so that this PMSM can obtain the same excellent
speed regulation performance as the DC motor. Fig. 2 shows
= Ax + Bu − ((A − KC)x̂ + Ky + Bu)
the PMSM control system structure.
= (A − KC)x̃ (9)

The solution of (9) is:

x̃(t) = e(A−KC) x̃(0), t ≥ 0 (10)

Analyzing (10), we can obtain that when the condition (11) is

satisfied, the eigenvalues of |A − KC| are all negative, which
ensures the convergence and asymptotic stability.
⎧
⎨ K < RS
1
LS (11)
⎩
K2 > 0

Using the luenberger observer, we can obtain the estimation

of back-EMF êα , êβ , which contains the information about
the rotor angle and speed, then the estimation of angle can
be expressed as:
Fig. 2. Vector control system structure of PMSM.

êβ
θ̂r = arctan(− ) (12)
êα
The estimation errors will exist if (12) is used to calculate
the motor angle directly, which will cause the motor to have
a bad performance. Especially while the PMSM is running at
low speed, a large angle estimation error may even lead to the
motor fault. Therefore, in order to get more accurate motor
angle, a phase-locked loop was used to obtain the PMSM
angle. Fig. 1 shows the phase-locked loop structure.
In fact a phase-locked loop is essentially a PI regulator,
the reference input is 0, the feedback input is the angle error,
and the output is the motor speed, then the rotor position is
calculated by a integrator. Fig. 3. RBF-PID adaptive control structure.

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 This strategy which expects the q-axis reference current A. Position and Speed Estimation
i∗d = 0 is adopted. Based on this control strategy, only The desired speed of the motor is 1000 r/rad, the simulation
the quadrature axis component exists in the stator current, time is 0.4 seconds, and the system simulation results are
only the permanent magnet torque component exists in the shown in Figs. 4-6. Fig. 4 shows the motor speed, as shown
electromagnetic torque, therefore the stator current can pro- in the figure, the control system responds quickly and the
duce the maximum torque. The RBF neural network PID motor can quickly stabilize at the desired speed. Fig. 5 shows
controller could adjust three PID controller parameters on- the estimated position of the motor rotor, the rotor position
line. Fig. 3 shows the RBF-PID adaptive control structure. estimated by the Luenberger observer can accurately follow
x = [iq (k), y(k), y(k − 1)]T is the input variables to the the actual position of the rotor in a short time. Fig. 6 shows
adaptive neural network. The neural network output: the estimation error of the motor position.

m
ym = ω j hj (13)
j=1

where m is the NN node number, wj is the weight, hj is

Gaussian function:

x − cj 2
hj = exp(− ), j = 1, 2, ..., m (14)
2bj
Define the system error as e(k) = r − yk , where r is a
desired speed, yk is the actual value. The RBF-PID controller
output:

Δiq = KP xc (1) + Ki xc (2) + Kd xc (3) (15)

where KP , KI , KD denote proportional gain, integral gain

and derivative gain, respectively. And xc (1), xc (2), xc (3) are
defined as: Fig. 4. Motor speed N r.
⎧
⎨ xc (1) = e(k) − e(k − 1)
xc (2) = e(k) (16)
⎩
xc (3) = e(k) − 2e(k − 1) + e(k − 2)
And we define a performance index function as Ek =
1 2
2 (e(k)) . The adjustment amount of KP , KI , KD could be
calculated by the gradient descent algorithm:
⎧ ∂Ek ∂y(k) ∂Δu ∂y(k)
⎨ ΔKP = −η ∂KP = −η ∂y(k) ∂Δu ∂KP = ηe(k) ∂Δu xc (1)
∂Ek
⎪
∂Ek ∂y(k) ∂Δu ∂y(k)
ΔKI = −η ∂K ∂Ek
= −η ∂y(k) ∂Δu ∂KI = ηe(k) ∂Δu xc (2)
⎪
⎩
I
∂Ek ∂y(k) ∂Δu ∂y(k)
ΔKD = −η ∂K ∂Ek
D
= −η ∂y(k) ∂Δu ∂KD = ηe(k) ∂Δu xc (3)
(17)
where the jacobian matrix:

∂y(k) ∂ym (k)  m

cji − Δu(k)
≈ = ω j hj (18)
∂Δu(k) ∂Δu(k) j=1 b2j

III. S IMULATIONS Fig. 5. Actual rotor position θ and estimated rotor position θ̂.

We provide simulations to verify the observer effectiveness

and control effect for a PMSM. For a PMSM described by B. Position and Speed Estimation With Emergency Load
(4), simulation cases were carried out according to the vector The desired speed of the motor is 1000 r/rad, the simulation
control system structure as shown in Fig. 2. And the pole- time is 0.4 seconds, an emergency load TL = 5 N · m is given
pairs number pn = 4, the stator resistance RS = 0.958 Ω, to the motor at 0.2 s, the system simulation results are shown
the stator inductance LS = 8.625 mH, the motor rotor flux in Figs. 7 and 8. Fig. 7 shows the motor speed, the motor can
linkage ψr = 0.1827 Wb, the rotor inertia J = 0.003 kg·m2 , quickly stabilize at the desired speed. The motor speed returns
the friction B = 0.008 N · m · s. to the desired speed in a short time while an emergency load

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 Fig. 6. Estimation error of rotor position θ̃. Fig. 8. Actual rotor position θ and estimated rotor position θ̂ with emergency
load.

is given at 0.2 s. Fig. 8 shows the estimated motor angle, the

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