Zero Speed Sensorless Position Detection for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines
A. S. Budden, D. Holliday and P. H. Mellor
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering,
University of Bristol, Merchant Venturers Building,
Woodland Road, Bristol, United Kingdom, BS8 1UB
Email: alan.s.budden@bristol.ac.uk
Abstract— A real-time, sensorless, zero speed position sensing
algorithm for permanent magnet synchronous machines is pre-
sented. The strategy is applicable to any brushless permanent
magnet machine that exhibits magnetic saliency. It is compu-
tationally simple and fast and can be used with machines that
exhibit distorted saliencies. Experimental results show that the
position measurement scheme exhibits excellent agreement with
results obtained using a resolver.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines (PMSMs) offer
many advantages over other machine types, including a high
power to weight ratio and simplicity of control [1]. To drive
these machines rotor position information is needed. This
normally requires a shaft-mounted sensor which adds consid-
erable cost to the system, increases the number of electrical
connections required between machine and controller and
reduces the overall reliability of the system. In order to over-
come these problems, it is desirable to develop a ‘sensorless’
position detection technique to estimate the position of the
rotor without the use of a mechanical sensor. Sensorless
techniques involve application of signal processing techniques
to extract the necessary information from the voltages and
currents in the machine, which can be measured using simple
and rugged transducers at the point of supply and which
are already present as a means of detecting machine fault
conditions and for use in current control strategies.
There are two separate conditions that need to be considered
when developing a PMSM drive without mechanical position
sensors:
• Medium and High Speed
• Zero and Low Speed
When the machine is being driven and the speed is sufficient
to produce a measurable back EMF, the drive currents can be
used to detect the rotor position. However, when the machine
is stationary, there is no back EMF being generated and hence
an alternative means of position sensing is necessary.
This paper presents a sensorless technique that measures
rotor position at zero speed and which is applicable to any
PMSM that exhibits magnetic saliency. The technique is
computationally simpler than many of the existing sensorless
strategies and is capable of operating with machines that
exhibit distorted saliencies. For any given PMSM the method
provides a ‘saliency fingerprint’, the apexes of which are
sufficient to provide rotor position information for a PMSM
driven in brushless DC mode. For brushless AC operation, a
simple curve fitting and interpolation procedure can be applied
to the fingerprint to enable high resolution position information
to be obtained.
0-7803-9033-4/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE. 2436
II. BACKGROUND
Techniques deriving rotor position without a mechanical
sensor can be divided into two main categories. The first of
these categories contains those techniques that use the shape
of the back EMF waveform in the machine to derive the
position [2]–[7]. These techniques take different forms. Firstly,
there are those techniques that simply estimate rotor position
either by detecting the zero crossing of the back EMF [2] (for
brushless DC drives) or by modelling the whole waveform [3]
(for brushless AC drives). In the latter case, accuracy can be
improved at the expense of increased complexity by imple-
menting an observer to allow dynamic correction of the model
parameters. As well as simple model correction routines [4],
these observers can also be implemented as extended Kalman
filters [5] or with artificial intelligence based systems [8], [9].
Due to the proportional relationship between rotor speed
and the magnitude of the back EMF, these techniques are only
viable when the machine speed is sufficient to produce an EMF
that is measurable above the noise floor [10]. They cannot be
used at zero speed.
The techniques in the second category [10]–[17] rely on
saliencies resulting either from the design of the machine
or from magnetic saturation. These saliencies modulate the
inductance of the machine windings as the shaft rotates. The
varying inductance can be measured at any speed [16] and this
latter technique therefore forms the basis for the development
of the method described in this paper.
It is important to note that in practice it is desirable to
use saliency based techniques only at the lower end of the
speed range. Detection of the saliency requires an additional
component to be added to the fundamental drive voltages and
this reduces the available DC link voltage and could introduce
undesirable torque ripple at high speed.
III. N OMENCLATURE
A. Symbols
Table I details the nomenclature used in this paper. The
reference frames mentioned in the table are discussed in
section III-B.
B. Reference Frames
In permanent magnet synchronous machine control, three
main reference frames are generally used. The first of these is
the abc reference frame, which is related to the three phases of
the motor. Due to the complexity of dealing with three phases,
this is often translated into the αβ two phase stator reference
frame, using the well known Clarke transformation [18],
 TABLE I
N OMENCLATURE
B d
Symbol Description
vabc Stator voltage in the abc reference frame ib
vαβ Stator voltage in the αβ reference frame
vb
vdq Stator voltage in the dq reference frame
iabc Stator current in the abc reference frame r
... ... va
q N ia
ωr Rotor electrical speed
A,
θr Rotor electrical position
S
ωi Angular frequency of injected voltages
ψm Flux in the stator windings due to the
permanent magnets
Rs Stator resistance vc
Ld d-axis stator inductance
Lq q-axis stator inductance ic
p Differential Operator C

shown in (1) for a voltage transformation. For a machine with Fig. 1. Reference Frames, Modified from [4]
a floating star point, the zero sequence component i0 is zero.
 
1 − 21 − 21 450

r  
2

√
3
√ 
3
vαβ0 = 0 − 2  vabc (1) 400
3

2

√1 √1 √1 350
2 2 2
Inductance (µH)

The last of the reference frames is the dq two phase rotor

300
reference frame. This is linked to the position of the rotor,
θr , and hence the electrical position of the rotor is required
to operate in this frame. The Park transformation from the 250

αβ frame to the dq frame is shown in (2) for a voltage

transformation. 200
 
cos (θr ) sin (θr ) 0
vdq0 = − sin (θr ) cos (θr ) 0 vαβ0 (2) 150
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0 0 1 Rotor Electrical Position (radians)

All of these reference frames are shown diagrammatically in
fig. 1.
IV. M AGNETIC S ALIENCY
The motor used in the development of the sensorless tech-
nique is an interior magnet permanent magnet synchronous
machine designed for use in a mid-size fuel cell powered
vehicle [19]. The design is based around an embedded mag-
net rotor construction and a concentrated wound stator. The
embedded magnets in the rotor result in an inherent magnetic
saliency that produces a detectable variation in the inductance
of the stator windings as the rotor turns, as illustrated in fig. 2.
Therefore, if the inductance of the rotor (or any property of
the system that is directly related to the inductance) can be
detected, the rotor position can be derived.
V. S ALIENCY D ETECTION
A. Principle
A balanced set of high frequency, low magnitude sinusoidal
voltages is applied to the machine terminals using a PWM
based drive. The frequency and magnitude are chosen to
Fig. 2. Inductance Variation as a Function of Rotor Position
ensure that insignificant torque generation results as a conse-
quence of the injection process. The resulting winding currents
are measured using Hall effect transducers. The currents are
converted from the three-phase abc representation to the two-
phase αβ form. As a consequence of the magnetic saliency,
the locus of the αβ currents is ellipsoidal, with a significantly
greater current magnitude in the d-axis compared to that in the
q-axis (due to the fact that Lq > Ld ). Fig. 3 illustrates these
ellipsoidal current loci obtained from static current injection
tests where the rotor has fixed angular displacements of 60◦
and 90◦ . The two rotor positions result in two distinct orien-
tations of the ellipse. This property can be used to determine
rotor position.
Whilst this method of using saliency to detect rotor position
has already been proposed [13], the existing techniques gen-
erally rely upon complicated and computationally expensive
ellipse fitting algorithms [13], where accuracy may be easily
compromised by the presence of electrical noise. Alternatively,

2437
 1
shown in (5) and (6).
0.8
   
cos θr − sin θr Ld 0 cos θr sin θr
Lαβ = (5)
0.6 sin θr cos θr 0 Lq − sin θr cos θr
 
0.4 L̄ − L̆ cos 2θr −L̆ sin 2θr
= (6)
0.2 L̆ sin 2θr L̄ + L̆ cos 2θr
Normalised iβ

0 where,
-0.2 1
L̄ = (Lq + Ld ) (7)
-0.4
2
1
L̆ = (Lq − Ld ) (8)
-0.6 2
-0.8 The balanced voltage set that is injected into the windings can
be represented by (9)
-1
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1  
Normalised iα − sin(ωi t)
vαβ = Vi (9)
(a) cos(ωi t)
where Vi is the magnitude of the injected signal. Combin-
1
ing (4), (6) and (9) gives the currents that result from voltage
0.8 injection and which contain the rotor position:
0.6
   
cos(ωi t) cos(2θr − ωi t)
iαβ = I1 − I2 (10)
0.4 sin(ωi t) sin(2θr − ωi t)
0.2 where I1 and I2 are terms dependent upon machine induc-
Normalised iβ

0
tance, and the frequency and magnitude of the set of injected
voltages [17].
-0.2

-0.4
C. Derivation of Rotor Position
To isolate the rotor position information, θr , contained in the
-0.6
second term of (10) the αβ currents are rotated to a reference
-0.8 frame that is synchronous with the injected voltage set and
-1 then passed through a high-pass filter. The resulting rotated
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
Normalised iα and filtered currents are represented by (11).
 
(b) cos(2θr − 2ωi t)
i = −I2
′
(11)
sin(2θr − 2ωi t)
Fig. 3. Examples from Experimental Data of Ellipses Rotating with Rotor
Position (a) θr = +60◦ ; (b) θr = +90◦ The final stage is to rotate (11) through an angle of
θ = −2ωi t rads to give (12) where the angle of the result is
directly related to the rotor angle. A simple Cartesian-to-polar
relatively complex techniques that use a combination of ma- transformation completes the sensorless scheme.
chine and saliency models with PID controllers have also  
been proposed [15], [17]. In contrast, the method proposed cos(2θr )
i′′ = −I2 (12)
in this paper uses a simple demodulation technique that is sin(2θr )
computationally simple and fast. In most practical motors however, the current loci obtained
at different rotor positions do not follow the same ellipsoidal
B. Algorithm Basis
shape since, due to such factors as stator slotting, the saliency
The standard model for a permanent magnet synchronous profile is not sinusoidal. This results in considerable error in
machine is shown in (3). the estimated position. The distorted saliency can be modelled
   
Rs + pLd −ωr Lq 0 by modifying (10) to include additional distorting compo-
vdq = idq + (3) nents [17]. This multiple saliency model is shown in (13).
ωr Ld Rs + pLq ψm ω r
 
If the angular frequency of the injection signal, ωi , is sufficient, cos (ωi t)
iαβ = I1
the resistance of the windings can be considered negligi- sin (ωi t) 
Pn (13)
ble compared to the reactance. Considering only the high- cos (hk θr − ωi t + φk )
+ Ik
frequency components of the system, the machine model may k=2 sin (hk θr − ωi t + φk )
be approximated by [17]: In tracking observer based systems, additional saliency models
vαβ ≈ jωi Lαβ iαβ (4) can be added to the observer for each component in (13)
in order to compensate for the saliency distortion [17]. For
where Lαβ is the result of transforming the dq-axis induc- significantly distorted saliencies, this adds considerable com-
tances into the two phase stationary reference frame [18] as plexity to the already complex tracking observer. In many

2438
 7
applications, the requirement is for simple and robust schemes Measured
to remove the possibility of failure. To achieve this goal, an Estimated
6
alternative technique is used to compensate for position error.
Through examination of the results obtained from this and

Rotor Electrical Position (radians)

5
other test machines, it has been observed that the distortion is a
highly consistent effect. A simple and rugged correction proce- 4
dure can therefore be achieved using a look-up table. There are
two possible means of producing this correction table. Firstly, 3
the table can be derived based on comparison of sensorless
and measured results. Alternatively, a self-commissioning test 2

based on voltage injection and a synchronous machine drive

requiring no position feedback allows the entire saliency 1

profile to be captured. The coefficients of (13) can then be

0
determined [20] using a fast Fourier transform (FFT). Using 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Rotor Electrical Position (radians)
this model in combination with the idealised model of (10),
the correction table can be created in the same manner as with Fig. 5. Comparison of Rotor Position Measurements
the static test system. Table generation is only required once
for a given machine and hence the computation time for a
0.25
single test is reduced significantly.
0.2
VI. E XPERIMENTAL S ETUP Error in Rotor Electrical Position (radians)
0.15
The technique has been implemented using an IGBT-based
0.1
power converter interfaced to the PMSM drive motor. The
system also includes a resolver to enable determination of the 0.05
accuracy of the method and a locking gearbox used during 0
static testing. For dynamic testing, the locking gearbox can
-0.05
be exchanged for a brushed DC load motor. In addition to
these hardware components, a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) -0.1
is used to generate the injection signals and also for performing -0.15
all of the processing necessary as part of the realisation of the
-0.2
technique.
A block diagram of the test platform with the gearbox -0.25
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
attached is shown in fig. 4. Rotor Electrical Position (radians)

Fig. 6. Position Error

Inverter
DSP Controller

Motor

Gate
CTs
Drive perfectly sinusoidal saliency, this profile would be circular.
Test results have shown that different fingerprints can be
Resolver
clearly identified for different machines.

Accuracy Check Resolver to Digital Gearbox 0.8

0.6
Fig. 4. Test Platform Block Diagram
0.4

0.2
VII. R ESULTS
Normalised i′′y

A balanced set of sinusoidal voltages with a 1 kHz fre- 0

quency was injected into the windings of the PMSM. Applica- -0.2
tion of the sensorless position scheme without compensation
-0.4
resulted in the position information presented in fig. 5.
The results obtained from the sensorless position measure- -0.6
ment scheme show excellent agreement with those obtained
-0.8
from the resolver. The error plot of fig. 6 shows that the
maximum error over one cycle is 2.75◦ mechanical. -1
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
To demonstrate the saliency distortion discussed in sec- Normalised i′′x
tion V-C, the ‘saliency fingerprint’ obtained from the one-and-
a-half slots per pole test machine is shown in fig. 7. For a Fig. 7. Saliency Fingerprint

2439
 Analysis of the saliency fingerprint allows the technique to
be tuned for a particular motor. This improves the accuracy
of the position sensing algorithm and enables machines with
significantly distorted saliencies to be driven in brushless
AC mode. A simple look-up table can be used to correct
for the errors produced by the distorted saliency. This table
single-dimensional table with a relatively low resolution –
intermediate points can be found by interpolation. For the
machine discussed in this paper, the correction table is shown
graphically in fig. 10. Due to the simplicity of the look-up table
3

can be created by analysing the relationship between the

saliency fingerprint and the corresponding points on a circle 2

(of arbitrary size) with the phase information derived from

Lookup Table Output (radians)

the true rotor position. Using the model presented in [17], the 1

mapping can be seen in fig. 8. In this diagram, the dashed lines

0

1
-1
0.8

0.6
-2
0.4
Normalised i′′y

0.2
-3
0 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Lookup Table Input (radians)
-0.2

-0.4
Fig. 10. Correction Data
-0.6

-0.8 structure, the correction process adds very little additional

-1
-1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5
Normalised i′′x
Fig. 8. Modelled Fingerprint Alignment
show the relationship between estimated and actual position.
They are also all connected to the origin in order to emphasise
the angular difference between the points. It can be seen
that there is a tendency for measurements to cluster around
the apexes of the fingerprint. These apexes correspond to the
‘cogging points’ of the machine and the clustering is the cause
of the errors in the position estimate.
The same mapping can be plotted for experimental data
captured from static tests on the machine, as shown in fig. 9.
computation time to the algorithm.
Test results for the full sensorless technique (including the
1 1.5
machine specific correction routine) have confirmed the overall
accuracy of this system. Fig. 11 shows a comparison of rotor
position measurement results using the correction system. The
small deviations that are visible in fig. 5 can no longer be seen
as the correction routine has adjusted the results in order to
compensate for errors. The error plot of fig. 12 shows that the
maximum error over one cycle has been reduced by nearly
70% to only 0.85◦ mechanical.
7
Measured
Corrected Estimate
6
Rotor Electrical Position (radians)

1 4

0.8
3
0.6

0.4
2
Normalised i′′y

0.2

0 1

-0.2
0
-0.4 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Rotor Electrical Position (radians)
-0.6

-0.8 Fig. 11. Comparison of Corrected Position Measurements

-1

-1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 VIII. C ONCLUSION

Normalised i′′x
Fig. 9. Experimental Fingerprint Alignment
Using the phase variation shown in figs. 8 and 9, a correction
look-up table can be generated. This look-up table is a
A computationally efficient sensorless rotor position mea-
surement technique that operates at zero speed has been pre-
sented. The technique is applicable to any brushless permanent
magnet machine that exhibits magnetic saliency. The sensor-
less position information obtained shows excellent agreement

2440
 0.06
Error in Corrected Electrical Position Estimation (radians)
0.04
0.02
0
-0.02
-0.04
-0.06
0 1
Fig. 12.
with results obtained from a resolver. The method also yields
‘saliency fingerprints’ that are specific to individual motors.
These fingerprints are the basis of a simple correction strategy
that provides accurate position information over a complete
mechanical cycle, even with machines that exhibit distorted
saliency profiles.
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