Abstract. In the paper a new sensorless control structure for the PMSM drive is presented. Such a structure is especially recommended for speed in the range of single revolutions per second (excluding standstill). The method uses a back EMF observer for position estimation. However, there is no need to estimate the speed. This is a big advantage because of possible irregularity of estimated back EMF in this speed range, which makes the calculation of speed difficult or impossible. The proposed structure is similar to the model following control, but the reference model attempts to track the motor operating point. The main idea is to utilize as a reference a model of the whole drive, including speed and current controllers and motor model. Such a model produces reference voltage for the real inverter. However, an extra unit -called rotator -is needed to provide precise control of direct axis current, which is sensitive to the improper position of the voltage vector. The rotator acts as a kind of compensator for error of position estimation. range. This is confirmed by experimentally obtained waveforms shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. This is the idle speed, using a constant value of reference current on q axis. These waveforms were obtained for a traditional field oriented control (FOC) method of the PMSM (using a similar structure as is shown in Fig. 4), with a cascade control structure using a closed speed control loop (which was disconnected for the test) with inner current control loops containing separate controllers on d and q axes, rotating synchronously with the rotor. The overall structure of control utilizes the sine and cosine of the estimated position and calculated speed value instead of measured values.To obtain smooth output values from the observer, the reference voltage is used instead of measured ones. This simplification gives good results