Saliency-based position sensorless control methods for PMSM drives - A review

Permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives are finding expanded use for industrial and domestic drive applications. With the distinguished characteristics such as reduced cost and increased reliability and robustness, position sensorless (self-sensing) control techniques have been good candidates for reliable and costless PMSM drives. The saliency-tracking based techniques further bring the expansion of applications with the extended controllable sensorless operating speed range. This paper presents a review on state of the art techniques for position sensorless drives using the saliency-tracking based methods. The signal injection methods and the future scope of research including the dynamic bandwidth improvement and the acoustic noise reduction are discussed.