A new sensorless drive method of Switched Reluctance Motors based on motor's magnetic characteristics

We propose a new sensorless drive method of Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM) based on motor's magnetic characteristics. Some drawbacks of the method using impressed voltage pulse at unenergized phases to detect the magnetic characteristic have been improved. The proposed method has the features: only one unenergized phase has been injected by impressed voltage pulse, that simplifies both hardware and control algorithm, and a new idea to determining the injecting timing for impressed voltage pulse has been introduced, that extremely eliminates the negative torque caused by some residual currents. Because the proposed method is very simple, instead of expensive DSP, the entire experimental system has been implemented in an analog and digital circuit (FPGA: Field Programmable Gate Array).