BLDC motor driver — Development of control and power electronics

This paper presents the development of control and power electronics parts for a BLDC motor drive. The signals from the most commonly used sensors for this application are used. The first one is the incremental encoder for speed and relative position detection, the other one is the three-signal Hall sensor which provides information about the absolute rotor position needed for electronic commutation. The contemporary three phase bridge driver integrated circuit used in this application provides good protection functionality to protect the bridge and the motor from excessive currents and short-circuit conditions. Hardware instead of software implementation of electronic commutation is implemented to provide more reliability. Both unipolar and bipolar PWM schemes are implemented. Besides the driver explanation, experimental results concerning speed and position control are presented.