Control Strategies for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors

Permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) have become the workhorse of modern electric drives thanks to their high efficiency, compactness and wide speed range. Control strategies for PMSMs encompass both classical and advanced methods, each addressing the intrinsic nonlinear dynamics, parameter variations and external disturbances. Field‐oriented control (FOC) and direct torque control (DTC) remain dominant for their intuitive decoupling of flux and torque loops and ease of implementation with proportional–integral regulators. To enhance robustness and transient response, robust and adaptive schemes such as sliding mode control, H∞ optimisation and passivity‐based control have been proposed. Observer‐based techniques, including disturbance observers and extended state observers, improve disturbance rejection and reduce reliance on precise motor models. More recently, model predictive control has gained attention for its ability to incorporate constraints directly and optimise performance over a future horizon. The interplay of these methods has led to hybrid solutions that combine model‐based predictive elements with observer compensation or robust switching laws. Taken together, these developments support the deployment of PMSMs in electric vehicles, robotics and renewable‐energy systems, where precise speed tracking, fault tolerance and energy efficiency are imperative.

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Control Strategies for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in control strategies for permanent magnet synchronous motors across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Field‐oriented control (FOC): A vector control method that decouples stator currents into orthogonal torque and flux components, enabling linearised and independent control loops.

Sliding mode control (SMC): A robust nonlinear strategy that forces system trajectories onto a predefined manifold, ensuring insensitivity to matched disturbances but requiring measures to reduce chattering.

Disturbance observer (DOB): A real‐time estimator that reconstructs external and internal perturbations, allowing feed-forward compensation to improve tracking and robustness.

H∞ control: An optimisation-based approach that minimises the worst-case gain from disturbances to controlled outputs, offering guaranteed robustness margins.

Passivity‐based control: A technique that shapes the energy exchange of a system to enforce stability, often by assigning desired interconnection and damping properties.

References

1. Robust Speed Control of PMSM Using Sliding Mode Control (SMC)—A Review. Energies (2019).
2. Critical Review on Robust Speed Control Techniques for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) Speed Regulation. Energies (2022).
3. Robust Speed Control for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors Using a Generalized Predictive Controller With a High-Order Terminal Sliding-Mode Observer. IEEE Access (2019).
4. Robust interconnection and damping assignment energy-based control for a permanent magnet synchronous motor using high order sliding mode approach and nonlinear observer. Energy Reports (2022).
5. High Order Disturbance Observer Based PI-PI Control System With Tracking Anti-Windup Technique for Improvement of Transient Performance of PMSM. IEEE Access (2021).