A PFC-Based BLDC Motor Drive Using a Canonical Switching Cell Converter

This paper presents a power factor correction (PFC)-based canonical switching cell (CSC) converter-fed brushless dc motor (BLDCM) drive for low-power household applications. The speed of BLDCM is controlled by varying the dc-bus voltage of voltage source inverter (VSI). The BLDCM is electronically commutated for reduced switching losses in VSI due to low-frequency switching. A front-end CSC converter operating in discontinuous inductor current mode (DICM) is used for dc-bus voltage control with unity power factor at ac mains. A single sensor for dc-bus voltage sensing is used for the development of the proposed drive, which makes it a cost-effective solution. A prototype of the proposed configuration is developed, and its performance is validated with test results for the control of speed over a wide range with a unity power factor at universal ac mains.