A novel single current sensor technique suitable for BLDCM drives

The torque output in a permanent magnet brushless DC motor (BLDCM) is usually controlled by regulating the motor phase currents. In this paper, three kinds of PWM strategies together with some critical review on traditional current measurements in a BLDCM drive system are discussed. A novel method for assessing the PWM information and measuring the motor phase currents by a DC link current sensor is also proposed. The attractive feature of this method is the simplicity with the current sample processing because there is no need to incorporate the conduction information of the power switches or diodes. Only the single sided PWM or the double sided complementary PWM is needed with the proposed technique.