Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal of the Franklin Institute 349 (2012) 1734–1757 Robust integral backstepping control for sensorless IPM synchronous motor controller Mohamed Assaad Hamida a , Alain Glumineau a,n , Jesus de Leon b a LUNAM Universit  e, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, IRCCyN, UMR CNRS 6597, 44321 Nantes, France b Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Facultad de Ingenieria Mecanica y Electrica, Mexico Received 1 June 2011; received in revised form 9 January 2012; accepted 9 February 2012 Available online 16 February 2012 Abstract In this paper, a sensorless speed control for interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSM) is designed by combining a robust backstepping controller with integral actions and an adaptive interconnected observer. The IPMSM control design generally requires rotor position measurement. Then, to eliminate this sensor, an adaptive interconnected observer is designed to estimate the rotor position and the speed. Moreover, a robust nonlinear control based on the backstepping algorithm is designed where an integral action is introduced in order to improve the robust properties of the controller. The stability of the closed-loop system with the observer– controller scheme is analyzed and sufficient conditions are given to prove the practical stability. Simulation results are shown to illustrate the performance of the proposed scheme under parametric uncertainties and low speed. Furthermore, the proposed integral backstepping control is compared with the classical backstepping controller. & 2012 The Franklin Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSM) have received increased attention in recent years thanks to their high efficiency, large torque-to-volume ratio, and reliable opera- tion. The field-oriented or vector control are used in many high performance variable speed control of IPMSM drives. However, for this scheme, continuous rotor position information is mandatory. Furthermore, the presence of encoder presents several drawbacks, such as increased www.elsevier.com/locate/jfranklin 0016-0032/$32.00 & 2012 The Franklin Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jfranklin.2012.02.005 n Corresponding author. E-mail address: alain.glumineau@irccyn.ec-nantes.fr (A. Glumineau).