FFT-Based Position Estimation in Switched Reluctance Motor Drives

Position estimation that uses only active phase voltage and current is presented, to perform high accuracy position sensorless control of a SRM drive. By extracting the amplitude of the first switching harmonic terms of phase voltage and current for a PWM period through Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), the flux-linkage and position are estimated without external hardware circuitry, such as a modulator and demodulator, which result in increased cost, as well as large position estimation error, produced when the motional back EMF is ignored near zero speed. A two-phase SRM drive system, consisting of an asymmetrical converter and a conventional closed-loop PI current controller, is utilized to validate the performance of the proposed position estimation scheme in comprehensive operating conditions. It is shown that the estimated values very closely track the actual values, in dynamic simulations and experiments.