Sensorless sliding mode control of a five-phase PMSM using extended Kalman filter

The aim of this paper is to develop a sliding mode control (SMC) with extended Kalman filter (EKF) observer for a five-phase permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM). Using sliding mode approach, the resulting control scheme is going to have some advantages such as disturbance rejection, strong robustness and simple implementation. On other side, the Kalman filter based algorithm has demonstrated to be the best solution for processing noisy measurements and obtaining high accuracy estimations. Indeed, by adding an EKF observer which estimates speed, position, and the unknown load torque, the proposed speed tracking controller can guarantee a good control performance with high reliability and low cost. The performance of the closed-loop system is assessed through representative simulations. The obtained simulation results illustrate that the sliding mode control-based speed controller possesses a remarkable performance and a faster dynamic response than the conventional linear PI control method.