Sensorless Rotor Position Estimation in Synchronous Reluctance Motors Exploiting a Flux Deviation Approach

In this paper, the rotor position of a synchronous reluctance motor is estimated exploiting the natural saliency of the machine through an addition of a small high-frequency sinusoidal voltage to the stator voltage reference. Due to rotor saliency, a stator voltage component is generated orthogonal to the added signal, whose amplitude depends on the phase displacement between the d-axis and the direction of the injected signal. A robust rotor position tracking can be accomplished by adjusting the direction of the carrier voltage in order to minimize the amplitude of the generated orthogonal voltage. The proposed technique allows zero-speed operation, does not require additional voltage or current sensors, and can easily correct the influence of the armature reaction. Experimental results confirm the validity of the proposed sensorless technique.