Improved Sensorless Operation of Interior PM BLAC Motor Drives with Reduced-Order EKF

It is a challenge to realise an EKF-based sensorless controller for an Interior Permanent Magnet (IPM) brushless ac motor drive due to the influence of non-linearities and rotor saliency. An improved reduced-order EKF method is presented, reducing the rotor position estimation error of an IPM motor, as evident in 1 due to the neglect of saliency. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified experimentally.