Design Consideration on the Square-Wave Voltage Injection for Sensorless Drive of Interior Permanent-Magnet Machines

Although it is widely known that the saliency-based position-sensorless drive is able to achieve the closed-loop control at zero and low speed, there is little literature addressing the consideration on the selection of injection voltage frequency. This paper evaluates the square-wave injection voltage at different frequencies for the design of an interior permanent-magnet (PM) machine sensorless drive. It is shown that more flux saturation on high-frequency (HF) d-axis inductance occurs than the saturation on q-axis inductance due to the magnetic relaxation. The HF saliency ratio (Lqhf/Ldhf) is increased by increasing the injection frequency. The performance of a saliency-based sensorless drive can be enhanced by properly designing the frequency of injection voltage. This paper also includes the experimental comparison between closed-loop encoder-based and closed-loop saliency-based sensorless operation of an interior PM machine drive.