Analysis of the Three-Phase Inverter Power Efficiency of a BLDC Motor Drive Using Conventional Six-Step and Inverted Pulsewidth Modulation Driving Schemes

In this paper, the three-phase inverter power efficiency of a brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive is analyzed theoretically and verified experimentally. An inverted pulsewidth modulation driving scheme has higher power efficiency than a conventional six-step driving scheme, particularly under low rotor speed due to less diode conduction power loss of Sync metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). However, the difference in the power efficiency decreases as the rotor speed increases; for a rotor speed above 1000 r/min, the difference in the power efficiency is negligible. In addition, the power efficiency of the inverted driving scheme drops further than one for the conventional six-step driving scheme with sampling frequency increase. It is due to the additional switching power loss of Sync MOSFET. The theoretical analysis of power loss in a three-phase inverter verifies the experimental results.