Design and implementation of a sensorless switched reluctance drive system

This paper presents a new sensorless switched reluctance drive system. The drive system can perform well when the system is operated in the pulse-width modulated (PWM) region. By suitably shaping an induced voltage in an inactive phase which is adjacent to an energized phase of a switched reluctance motor (SRM), the shaft position of the rotor can be easily obtained. As a result, the position sensor can be eliminated. First, the theoretical analysis of the proposed method is presented. By systematic theoretical analysis, a voltage signal which can easily estimate the shaft position of the motor is derived. This signal is only related to the input dc voltage of the converter, and the self and mutual inductances of the motor. Then, a new method to measure the self and mutual inductances of the SRM is proposed. After that, the design for a simple circuit which can synthesize the required voltage signal for rotor position estimation is presented. Next, how a 32-bit microprocessor system is used to execute the position and speed estimation, speed-loop control, and current-commands generation is shown. A closed-loop drive system is thus achieved. Several simulated and experimental results validate the theoretical analysis. A new direction in the design and implementation of a sensorless switched reluctance drive system is presented.