Improved high-frequency carrier voltage measurement for position estimation of switched-flux permanent magnet machines

The conventional 12/10 stator/rotor poles switched-flux permanent magnet (SFPM) machine is usually based on all poles wound topology, each phase comprising four winding coils in series connection. However, alternate coils of the same phase have different machine saliency characteristics. Moreover, in order to measure the high-frequency (HF) carrier voltage, the mid-tapered winding wires can be utilized. Consequently, the machine saliencies can be measured separately from two parts of winding coil connections. This paper investigates the influences of machine saliencies on the sensorless rotor position estimations based on different sequence of winding coil connections, in which the primary saliency may contain some additional harmonics referring to the secondary saliency that will degrade the overall sensorless control operations. Furthermore, a simple compensation method is proposed to reduce the influence of multiple saliencies to achieve more accurate sensorless rotor position estimation. By comparing with rotor positon estimations without the proposed compensation and HF carrier current based method, the effectiveness of improved sensorless rotor position estimation has been demonstrated experimentally, as well as the application to dual 3-phase SFPM machines.