Mechanical sensorless control of PMSM with online estimation of stator resistance

This paper provides an improvement in sensorless control performance of nonsalient-pole permanent-magnet synchronous machines. To ensure sensorless operation, most of the existing methods require that the initial position error as well as the parameters uncertainties must be limited. In order to overcome these drawbacks, we study them analytically and present a solution using an online identification method which is easy to implement and is highly stable. A stability analysis based on Lyapunov's linearization method shows the stability of the closed-loop system with the proposed estimator combined with the sensorless algorithm. This approach does not need a well-known initial rotor position and makes the sensorless control more robust with respect to the stator resistance variations at low speed. The simulation and experimental results illustrate the validity of the analytical approach and the efficiency of the proposed method.