Full-Region Sensorless BLDC Drive for Permanent Magnet Motor Using Pulse Amplitude Modulation With DC Current Sensing

This article improves the sensorless brushless dc (BLdc) motor drives using the pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) with dc current sensing. Comparing to conventional BLdc drives using pulsewidth modulation (PWM), PAM BLdc drives result in better drive efficiency especially at low speed. However due to six-step commutation, additional position detection issues are resultant for the sensorless operation. They consist of voltage spike at low speed and commutation delay at high speed. In this article, these BLdc position detection issues are improved based on the proposed continuous position estimation. At low speed, the commutation compensation with dc current sensing is developed to minimize the influence of voltage spike. At high speed, several voltage compensation schemes are applied to improve the commutation delay and maximizing high-speed operation region. A 320-W permanent magnet motor prototype is used for the experimental verification of proposed PAM BLdc drive. Comparing to the conventional BLdc drives, the PAM drive with proposed position estimation demonstrates the improvement on both low-speed dynamic response and high-speed steady state stability.

Automated summary

This article presents the improvement of sensorless BLdc motor drives using PAM with DC current sensing. The proposed continuous position estimation helps to minimize issues like voltage spike at low speed and commutation delay at high speed. Experimental verification on a 320-W permanent magnet motor prototype shows improved low-speed dynamic response and high-speed steady state stability.