FPGA-based sensorless PMSM drive using parallel reduced-order Extended Kalman Filter

This paper presents the design and evaluation of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based speed sensorless controller for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM). The estimation of the rotor position and speed is achieved by using a parallel reduced-order Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to alleviate the need of physical sensors. Compared with the traditional method of EKF, the system order is reduced, the process of iteration of speed estimation algorithm is greatly simplified and it is easy to realize the digital system. To achieve this objective, a comparison is made between the parallel reduced-order EKF, full-order EKF and sliding mode observer (SMO). The developed controller has been implemented in a FPGA-based environment and the very high speed integrated circuit-hardware description language (VHDL) is adopted to describe advantageous features of the proposed control system. The validity of the approach is verified through simulation results based on the Modelsim/Simulink co-simulation method.