The paper proposes a sensorless speed control strategy for a PMSM (Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor) based on a new SMO (Sliding Mode Observer), which substitutes a signum function with a sigmoid function. To apply robust sensorless control of PMSM against parameter fluctuations and disturbance, the high speed SMO is proposed, which estimates the rotor position and angular velocity from the back EMF. The low-pass filter and additional position compensation of the rotor are used to reduce the chattering problem commonly found in sliding mode observer with signum function, which becomes possible by applying the sigmoid function with the control of a switching function. Also the proposed sliding mode observer with the sigmoid function has better efficiency than the conventional sliding mode observer since it adjusts the observer gain by variable boundary layer and estimates the stator resistance. The stability of the proposed sliding mode observer is verified by the Lyapunov second method in determining the observer gain. The validity of the proposed high speed PMSM sensorless velocity control has been demonstrated by real experiments.