FPGA-based Sensorless controller for Synchronous Machine using an Extended Kalman Filter

This paper presents a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based Sensorless current controller for a Salient Synchronous Machine (SSM). The implemented algorithm uses an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to estimate the rotor position. The used FPGA design methodology has been presented including functional simulations, development of the FPGA architecture and hardware in the loop tests. Some experimental results are provided so as to illustrate the efficiency and the interest of using FPGAs in such Sensorless application.