Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Inventive Systems and Control (ICISC 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number:CFP18J06-ART, ISBN:978-1-5386-0807-4; DVD Part Number:CFP18J06DVD, ISBN:978-1-5386-0806-7
Sliding-Mode Observer for Estimating Position and
Speed and Minimizing Ripples in Rotor Parameters of
PMSM
Manjul Okte
Department of Electrical engineering,
NIT Kurukshetra, India
manjulokte@gmail.com
Abstract—A sliding-mode observer (SMO) has been designed
and implemented in this paper for the sensor-less speed control of
three phase permanent-magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). The
designed SMO substitutes the conventional switch function with a
sigmoid function to reduce system chattering. In order to minimize
ripples, present in torque and speed of PMSM, two Proportional-
integral (PI) controllers are utilized. The SMO is designed based
on back EMF model by which speed and position of permanent
magnet rotor are computed. This helps eradicate the phase
compensation module and the low pass filter and accuracy of
estimating the parameters is improved. Simulation results of the
designed SMO algorithm are presented and the reduction in
ripples of motor parameters are demonstrated.
Keywords—sensor-less control, permanent magnet synchronous
motor, sliding-mode observer
I. INTRODUCTION
Due to its high performance, high power density and simple
structure, PMSM find its use in variety of industrial applications
such as drives, automobile industry and robots. For field oriented
controlling, accuracy of information regarding rotor position,
which is obtained from resolver, optical encoder or hall sensor,
is very significant for reckless dynamic response [1], [2].
Whereas, to reduce costs, improve mechanical robustness, save
mounting space and for better system reliability, which is very
crucial for many applications, it is highly desirable to avoid such
sensors. To address these issues, a sensor-less control method,
by way of replacing position sensors, has been proposed for
controlling of motor using the projected values of position and
also the velocity of the rotor [3].
The sensor-less control technology is divided into two types:
the high-frequency injection method [4-7] and the estimation
method based on observer [8], [9]. The high frequency injection
method is a fairly popular method which does not depend on the
motor model. In this method, there is overlapping of high
frequency voltage to motor voltage but, the signal brings high-
frequency noise resulting in degradation of performance. The
estimation method is based on observer, which requires the
precise values of parameters of the model of the motor, which if
not available, disturbs the estimation performance. Online
978-1-5386-0807-4/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Dr. Sathans
Department of Electrical Engineering,
NIT Kurukshetra, India
sathans@nitkkr.ac.in
parameter identification has been made use of to enhance the
accuracy of the position estimation [10]. In these circumstances,
the SMO has been extensively applied for the simple algorithm
and robustness, which reduces the dependency of observer on
the model to a great extent [11-14].
SMO exhibits better robustness of variable structure control.
As system error just enters the sliding mode, the dynamic
performance of the system wholly depends on the sliding
surface, which can ensure better robustness of the complete
system against the parameter variations [15]. Chattering
phenomenon becomes an integral part of sliding mode structures
due to discrete switching control [16]. In case of conventional
SMO, switch type function is used as a control function. The
estimated EMF signal contains high frequency oscillations,
which are filtered by using low pass filters and back
electromotive force signal is extracted for estimation of position
and velocity. But, introduction of low pass filter in the system
results in phase delay, which makes observer unsuitable for
highly efficient applications. In [17], two cascaded SMOs are
used, but because of numerous low-pass filters used therein, the
phase delay gets increased.
To address these issues, the paper implements a design of
SMO to obtain smooth sensor-less control of PMSM. Here in
this design, a sigmoid function replaces conventional switch
function to minimize system chattering. Besides, low pass filters
are also eliminated from SMO. To help improve parameter
estimation, an observer has been created as per back EMF signal
model to obtain back EMF signal.
II. PMSM MODELLING
Fixed frame stator model is developed first to understand the
sensor-less control. PMSM comprises a stator with three phase
winding and the rotor is made up of permanent magnet high
permeability material. The state equations for the PMSM
system in the stationary reference frame are [18]:
di
L ( α) R i  e  u
s dt sα α α
506
 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Inventive Systems and Control (ICISC 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number:CFP18J06-ART, ISBN:978-1-5386-0807-4; DVD Part Number:CFP18J06DVD, ISBN:978-1-5386-0806-7

diβ rotating reference frame, a phase-locked loop based speed

Ls ( )  R s i β  eβ  u β (1) calculator and a proposed SMO based rotor position estimator.
dt
H˞ M MU VLQ˥
I PI controllers, due to good dynamic response characteristics, are
(2)
H M I MU FRV˥ made use of in the system. For the sake of simplification,
˟ transformation from abc frame to stationary alpha-beta reference
where eα, eᵦ, iα, iᵦ, uα and uᵦ are back EMFs, phase currents and frame is carried out by using Clark transformations and Park
phase voltages in stationary reference frame, Ls is stator side transformations. The system also includes a PWM generation
phase inductance, Rs is stator frame resistance, Ψs is flux linkage module, a three-phase power inverter and the PMSM. Flux
of Permanent Magnet, ωr is electrical angular velocity and θ is weakened controller gets activated in the event of speed of
rotor position in electrical degrees. As can be observed from (1), synchronous motor becoming more than its rated speed. It
the EMF function contains rotor position and rotor speed, which produces demagnetizing current command to weaken the flux
are estimated when EMF signal is known. The torque speed [19].
characteristics of PMSM are shown in Fig. 1.

IV. SLIDING MODE OBSERVER

A. CONVENTIONAL SMO

The sliding-mode control is able to confine the state machine

Fig 1. Torque speed characteristics of PMSM
III. SENSORLESS CONTROL OF PMSM
Fig. 2 shows the schematic diagram of sensor less control of
PMSM, wherein there is a speed PI regulator for reducing the
error in speed of the rotor by way of feedback path in the system,
a flux-weakening controller, two current PI regulators in the
parameters on the sliding surface by dynamically altering the
system control structure. This finds very common use in
nonlinear system control due to robustness against system
parameter discrepancies. But, the conventional SMO has got the
limitations of chattering and time delay due to low pass filter for
the rotor position compensation [7]. Fig. 3 shows the schematic
of conventional SMO in which signum function is used as
switching function and the low-pass filter is considered to
neutralize the chattering effects due to switching. The
conventional SMO is based on Lyapunov function- the
controlling method used to estimate both the position and speed
of the rotor at one time.

Fig 2. Block diagram of sensor less vector control

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 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Inventive Systems and Control (ICISC 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number:CFP18J06-ART, ISBN:978-1-5386-0807-4; DVD Part Number:CFP18J06DVD, ISBN:978-1-5386-0806-7

As a result = ( − ) (8)
Therefore, EMF signal of motor is given by:
= ( − )
= − (9)

Fig 3. Conventional SMO

b. Rotor position and speed estimation
Even with the aforesaid SMO, the needed equivalent EMF signal
B. IMPROVED SMO still has got the high frequency component and should therefore,
not be used to estimate rotor speed and position. In conventional
SMO, low pass filter is employed to eliminate high frequency
a. Improved current observer components but it has got the adverse effect and causes
Based on the theory of sliding-mode variable structure, sliding additional phase delay which relates to cut-off frequency of
surface is described as: given filter. With the objective of complete compensation of
phase delay problem, a feedback loop of real time angular
S(X ) iˆs  is 0 (3) velocity is added to the system, but it disturbs compensation
strategy. Therefore, as an alternate to using phase compensation
technique and LPF for filtration, an improved SMO is
implemented whose structure is based on back EMF model,
iˆs [iˆD iˆE ] is the estimated current value. which is expressed as

Given the mathematical model of PMSM in the stationary (α, β)

frame, the SMO is as under:
=ꙍ
diˆD
Ls ( )  Rs iˆD  eD  uD  kF (iˆD  iD )
dt = −ꙍ (10)
(4)
diˆ Based on the above expressions, a back-EMF observer is
Ls ( D )  Rs iˆE  eE  u E  kF (iˆE  iE ) introduced whose equations are:
dt
= −ꙍ −ꙍ −
where k is constant observer gain, sgn(x) is signum function, and
(3) is the conventional SMO. With an aim of minimizing the =ꙍ +ꙍ −
chattering phenomenon, the signum function is replaced with a
continuous function- the sigmoid function- which is identified ꙍ
as: = − (11)

where, = − , = − ,ꙍ = ꙍ − ꙍ
2
F ( x) [ ] 1 (5) back EMF signal equations are[18]:
(1  e ax )
̇ = ̇ + ̇ + ꙍ ꙍ̇
where a is the variable parameter. To authenticate the stability
of the aforesaid SMO, the Lyapunov function is described as ̇ =− + ≤0 (12)
1 T
V S(X ) S(X ) (6) By using EMF signal, the rotor position can be estimated as:
2
eD
The stability state can be expressed as[18] Tˆ  arctan( ) (13)
eE
T c  Sc S
V S(X ) S(X ) SD SD E E
1
LS
>D
§
¨ iˆ
©
i ·
¸e  k §
D ¹ D
¨ iˆ  i ·
© D
¸F §
¨ iˆ  i ·
D ¹ © D
¸ 
D ¹
@ (7)
Also, projected value of speed signal is obtained by applying
integral function in the observer. Going by the complete
theoretical explanation, the control block diagram of the sensor-
1 ª§¨ iˆ  i e ·¸  k §¨ iˆ  i ·¸ F §¨ iˆ  i ·¸ º  less control of PMSM is shown in Fig. 2, whereas in Fig. 4 is
Ls «
¬© E E E ¹ © E E ¹ © E E ¹»¼ depicted the structure diagram of the improved SMO. From Fig.
R
L «
ªs
« iˆD  iD2
§
¨ iE  iE ·
©
2º
¸ »d0
¹ »
 2, it can be brought out that the input of the SMO is the motor
voltage, which is re-established by using the actual
s ¬ ¼
measurement of duty cycle and the dc bus voltage computed

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 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Inventive Systems and Control (ICISC 2018)
IEEE Xplore Compliant - Part Number:CFP18J06-ART, ISBN:978-1-5386-0807-4; DVD Part Number:CFP18J06DVD, ISBN:978-1-5386-0806-7

from the space vector modulation structure. The use of u α and
uᵦ eliminates dead band time effect of inverter to some extent,
besides improving the accuracy of estimation of speed and
position, due to the accuracy of EMF signal obtained from SMO
being high.
Because the reference torque is given as input after 2 seconds, a
switch-over is seen in each waveform pattern.
Initially the PMSM starts with no load. Reference rotor speed
is considered a step signal with step size of 2 seconds and
jumping from -100 to +100 rad/s. Also, a reference torque is
containing the improved SMO model is considered as a step
signal with 3 seconds as step size whose value lies between -10
to +10 N-m. A feedback loop containing new SMO model is
considered in the simulation.

The EMF signal output of the PMSM is applied to the new SMO,
which generates reference angle in radians and rotor speed in
rad/sec to reduce the error in the system.

Table I: PMSM parameters

Fig 4. Improved SMO technique

Parameters Symbol Values

V. SIMULATION RESULTS
Rated power 3.8kW
Simulation is implemented on the MATLAB platform version Rated voltage 180V
13a. A Simulink model is developed using PMSM block, two PI
controllers for controlling the stator currents in ABC reference Rated torque 14.5N-m
frame, a three-phase inverter with SVPWM technique, a three- Pull out torque 40 N-m
phase voltage-current measurement block giving three phase
stator currents as output, a hysteresis controller and power GUI Rated current In 12.9A
block in continuous mode. Simulation time is 5 seconds. Two
reference quantities are used to reduce the error. Number of poles P 4
pairs
d-axis Inductance .0085H
PMSM model parameters are specified as in table I.
q-axis inductance .0085H
The gain parameters of Proportional-Integral controllers are:
Flux Ψ .175 Vs
PI 1: Kₚ=1000, Kᵢ=5 for rotor speed feedback loop
Motor inertia J 0.0027 kg.m2
PI 2: Kₚ=2, Kᵢ=1000 for stator current feedback loop
Stator resistance R 0.2

(a)

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 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Inventive Systems and Control (ICISC 2018)
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(b)

(c)

Fig 5. Simulink waveforms of (a) electromagnetic torque, (b) rotor speed, (c) stator current at d-axis

implemented an improved SMO scheme, which operates with

back EMF signal detection helping thereby in accurately
estimating the motor motion parameters. Also, the need to
introduce low pass filter and phase compensation is eliminated.
Additionally, as can be observed, by using PI controllers in
feedback path, ripples in rotor torque and rotor speed get reduced
appreciably.

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Fig 6. Rotor position in radians
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