A Low Cost Position Sensorless Brushless DC Motor
Drive
Prashant Suranaa, Sreejith R.b, Student Member, IEEE and K. R. Rajagopal, Senior Member, IEEE
Department of Electrical Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi - 110016, India
a
prashant.surana@hotmail.com; bsreejith_r@ee.iitd.ac.in
Abstract—A low cost position sensorless brushless DC motor
drive is presented in this paper. The motor starts with simple
align and go methodology, to a speed where a traditional
sensorless algorithm based on winding back EMF, detects
accurate commutation instants and then filtered line to line back
EMF crossings are utilized to find the rotor position. The speed
and current are controlled with variable structure sliding mode
control. The drive uses a low cost microcontroller and only one
current sensor, which makes it a cost effective drive. The
performance of the presented drive is proved by simulation and
experimentally on low cost high performance DSP
microcontroller. The presented control drive is useful for
developing low cost commercial and domestic applications.
Keywords- Sensorless; Brushless DC; Sliding mode control;
back-emf
I. INTRODUCTION
Since last few years, the efficiency and compactness
considerations of industrial and domestic appliances are
leading to a great rise in demand of highly efficient motors
which mainly consists of permanent magnet motors.
PMBLDC motor is used in home appliances, industrial fans,
electric bikes, electric cars and compressors. In Japan,
presently almost all compressors of air-condition units are
running with Brushless DC motors. Germany has goal to
mandate all cars in the country to be run on electricity by
2030. The main reasons behind these trends are high
efficiency, high power density and compact size of BLDC
motor. The maintenance is almost negligible for these
brushless motors. However they are costlier as compared to
conventional motors, requires additional hardware
components and need more complex software for control.
Advancement in power semiconductor devices and
microcontrollers are lowering the cost of these components
and availing feasibility to develop low cost controllers.
Because of this reason, many industries are replacing installed
single phase induction motors with permanent magnet
brushless DC motors and permanent magnet synchronous
motors. This increasing demand of PMBLDC motors are
leading to great research and innovation in this field since last
few years. Findings new sources of rare earth materials will be
an added benefit to achieve more economically produced
BLDC motors.
A brushless DC motor is an electronically commutated
motor which is powered by a DC voltage source using a
voltage source inverter. Brushless DC motor is permanent
978-1-4673-8888-7/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
magnet synchronous motor with trapezoidal back EMF. Rotor
is made of permanent magnet and stator is having three phase
winding to feed power to the motor. Motor rotates on the
principle of attraction and repulsion between magnetic poles.
Permanent Magnet BLDC motor requires proper position
information in order to perform accurate switching of DC
supply to feed three phase windings of the motor. Correct
position sensing and corresponding switching facilitates the
motor to produce rated torque.
The position is sensed with the help of mechanical Hall
effect sensors. These sensors work in limited temperature
range, occupies space in motor, needs additional wires from
motor end to transfer the position information and it reduces
system reliability also. These problems associated with
sensors led to develop sensorless techniques to operate
brushless DC motor.
DC
Source
Reference Micro BLDC
Inverter
Speed Controller Motor
Current Measurement
Hall Signal
Fig. 1. BLDC motor drive
Some sensorless starting techniques are reported in the
literature. 180 degree commutation starting [1] and align and
accelerate [2] are simplest ones where as inductive sensing [3]
is complex to implement and does not work for low
inductance motors. There have been various sensorless drive
techniques which commutate a brushless DC motor without
any position sensor. Back EMF zero crossing detection [4, 5,
6] is the most popular method because it requires less complex
hardware and software but does not work well at lower speed.
Other invented methods for e.g. third harmonic back EMF
sensing [7] requires neutral point availability, freewheeling
diode conduction technique [8] needs extra hardware, back
EMF integration technique [9] has good low speed
performance but need access to neutral point and observer
based methods [10, 11] needs much computation. Among all
above sensorless techniques, back-EMF method is commonly
used because of its simple circuit configuration and it does not
need any voltage sensor and less mathematical calculations. In In line to neutral back EMF method, a phase shift of 30° to
general voltage, speed and currents are control parameters of the zero crossings can match accurately with the actual
any motor drive. Conventional hysteresis control [12] gives commutation signals but neutral point is not accessible in
variable switching frequency, most popular PI control [13] general. A virtual neutral can be created using star connected
does not give desired performance in case of uncertain resistive network but it will attract extra power loss, so line to
disturbances whereas sliding mode control [14] gives better line back EMF method is implemented because it can be
performance in case of uncertainty and noise because it is measured with ease without any extra elements. The back EMF
more robust control algorithm. of a motor cannot be measured directly, so it is derived from
The presented drive starts with Align & Go method, rotor terminal voltages as discussed below.
position is detected by zero crossing of line back EMF and
Using Fig. 2 circuit, applying Kirchhoff’s voltage law to
controlled using Sliding Mode Control. It have voltage, speed
the all three windings of the motor,
and current control feature. Amidst various popular control
algorithms that includes PI control, sliding mode control, d (i  i )
E AB  U AB  L A B  R(iA  iB ) (1)
fuzzy logic control and hysteresis control, a sliding mode dt
controller is chosen. The non linearity of the brushless DC d (i  i )
motor system and parameter variations of the system often E BC  U BC  L B C  R(iB  iC ) (2)
dt
affects the performance of the PI controller. Hysteresis control
has a variable switching frequency problem. Sliding mode d (i  i )
E AC  U AC  L A C  R(iA  iC ) (3)
control is a nonlinear control method and because of its less dt
complex circuit and robust performance to precisely control
motor speed and winding current, it is used. where,
However when the motor is at standstill or low speed, the EAB, EBC, EAC = Line back EMF (V)
back EMF is almost zero and detection of commutation UAB, UBC, UAC = Line Terminal Voltages (V)
instants is nearly impossible. So starting the motor with back L = Winding inductance (H)
EMF zero crossing is not feasible, and a technique has to be R = Winding Resistance (Ω)
adapted among available techniques. A simple starting iA, iB, iC = Winding current (A)
technique, Align and Go is implemented and motor is driven
till some minimum speed where back EMF detection is As the motor resistance is very less, the armature resistance
possible. This starting method is very simple to implement and drop will be very less compared to the applied voltage, and
no extra circuitry is required. But, initially, motor may rotate hence it can be neglected. From equation (1) to equation (3), it
in reverse direction also. can be seen that neglecting armature drop, back EMF equates
to the terminal voltage.
II. SENSORLESS STARTING
The concept of applied starting method is very simple. Line to line back EMF zero crossings has been used to
Motor is started with align and run technique. One upper leg determine Hall signals. Hall signals zero crossings coincides
switch and one lower leg switch is turned on, so that rotor with zero crossing of line back EMFs as shown in Fig. 3.
moves to a predefined position which is known to us. After
setting the rotor to a pre-defined position, synchronized firing Eab (V)
pulses with increasing frequency are applied. As the rotor tries
Hb
to catch the stator flux and gets accelerated up to mid speed Position θ (degrees)
range, conventional sensorless operation is initiated.
III. SENSORLESS RUNNING
Ebc (V)
An IGBT based voltage source inverter is connected to the
three-phase brushless DC motor as shown in Fig. 2. A current Hc
sensor is placed to measure current through DC link or DC Position θ (degrees)
source. Here, position Hall signals are not connected to the
system and they are generated virtually by a method explained
below.
Eca (V)
S1 S3 S5
Ha

Position θ (degrees)

La Ra
+ A
Vdc Lb Rb
- B π/3 2π/3 π 4π/3 5π/3 2π 7π/3 8π/3 3π

Lc Rc
C Fig. 3. Back EMF and Hall signal zero crossings
S4 S6 S2 Hence, the commutation instants can be determined by
detecting zero crossings of terminal voltages. But when the
motor is PWM controlled, it has higher order harmonics of
PWM frequency in its terminal voltages. Due to this reason,
detection of true zero crossing becomes difficult. These higher
Fig. 2. BLDC motor fed by a voltage source inverter
order harmonics are filtered out through a low pass filter. where,
Higher order harmonics are eliminated but an undesired phase iαref = reference current
shift which is speed dependent has been included by low pass ωref = reference speed
filter which prevents accurate commutation. Hence, it is iα = actual current
desired to minimize the phase delay by choosing proper filter ω = actual speed (rad/s)
circuit parameters for rated speed.
To reduce the chattering phenomenon, the exponential
A potential divider circuit with a small filter capacitor to reaching law is employed.
measure the average terminal voltages is shown in Fig. 5.
Potentiometer reduces terminal voltage signal to the level at Si   K1 sgn(Si )  K 2Si (10)
which it can interact with microcontroller without damaging it. S   K3 sgn(S )  K 4S (11)
This circuit is a single stage RC low pass filter which K1, K3 decides the speed at which system reaches sliding
introduces a delay in virtual Hall signal generation. The delay speed and K2, K4 sets the responsiveness of the system. So
is given by proper setting of these constants has to be done.
CR R (4)
   tan 1 ( 1 2 * e ) Reference torque can be found from the outer speed loop
R1  R2
using equations (7) and (12),
dref
Here, R1 = R2 = 1 kΩ and C = 0.1 μF T  J (K3sgn(S )  K 4S  )  Tload  Bm (12)
dt
Filter elements are chosen to provide very less phase delay
of around 5° electrical at rated speed of 4000 rpm. Output and reference voltage to the motor winding can be found from
signals from the filter are connected to ground via diodes to equations (5) and (11),
prevent negative signal, as microcontroller cannot read a diref (13)
negative signal. Vdc  La (K1sgn(Si )  K 2Si  )  E  iRa
dt
IV. SLIDING MODE CONTROL
Sliding mode control (SMC) is a nonlinear control theory V. SIMULATION RESULTS
which is accurate, robust, easily tunable and easy to implement.
The presented sensorless drive of a 105 W, 4000 rpm motor
As the brushless DC motor is also a nonlinear system, the SMC
is simulated in MATLAB Simulink. Block diagram of the
can be considered as one of the most suitable control technique
drive is shown in Fig. 4. Simulation model contains motor
for its speed and current control. SMC has the adaptive ability
model with actual motor parameters, reference speed or
against the disturbances and perturbation in the system. A
voltage, control algorithm, PWM switching pulses and
particular sliding function can be chosen to set the system
measurements.
behavior and the closed loop response can be made insensitive
to particular disturbances. A reference speed is set in Simulink and according to error
in controlled variables, pulse width of switching signals are
The brushless DC motor model is developed from its state
modified. Finally, the system reaches to steady state and settles
equations by obtaining its governing electrical and mechanical
down until any disturbance occurs or the reference change
parts.
happens.
di
Vdc  iRa  La E Reference Driver
dt (5) Microcontroller Sliding
Speed Mode and BLDC Motor
dm Unit Control
Td  J  Bm  Tload Input Inverter
(6)
dt
where,
Vdc = DC Link voltage (V) Virtual Hall signal
E = Back EMF(V) generation
La = Winding inductance (H)
Ra = Winding Resistance (Ω)
i = Winding current (A) Fig. 4. Sensorless Brushless DC motor drive block diagram.
Td = Developed torque (Nm)
J = Moment of inertia(kg.m2)
B = Friction coefficient (kg/ms)
ωm = Mechanical speed (rad/s)
Tload = Load Torque (Nm)

The sliding surface S is chosen as,

d
S  K1e  e (7)
dt
where e is the error and K1 is constant.
So as to control speed and current, two loops has been used.
Si  ei  iaref  ia (8)
S  e  ref   (9)
Fig. 5. Virtual Hall signal generation circuit
 The motor is driven in sensorless mode and sliding mode Virtual Hall signal generation is implemented by circuit
control has been applied on the current and speed. Sensorless shown in Fig. 5. Back EMF zero crossings are detected by a
method based on line to line back EMF method is implemented logical operator and Hall signals are taken at output.
using RC filter as shown in Fig. 5.
1.2
Sliding mode control is developed in simulation as shown 1
in Fig. 6. The reference speed, load torque, DC link current and 0.8
actual speed are given as inputs. Actual speed is obtained using
0.6
the virtual Hall signals generated.

Hall Signal
0.4

0.2

-0.2

0.418 0.419 0.42 0.421 0.422 0.423 0.424 0.425

time(sec)

Fig. 8. Virtual Hall signal (solid black) and actual Hall signal (dotted red)

Agreement between actual Hall signals and virtual Hall

signals as shown in Fig. 8 shows the accuracy of the position
estimation. A delay of around 5 degrees is present but which
has very less effect on performance as the speed tracking is
done very accurately.
VI. HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION
The presented control drive was implemented in hardware
Fig. 6. Sliding mode controller in SIMULINK as shown in the Fig. 9. A low cost microcontroller TIVA C
The parameters of the motor used in simulation and is series TM4C123GH6PM from Texas Instruments is used to
shown in Table I. run the control algorithm. Hall effect based current sensor is
used for DC link current measurement. A Semikron inverter
TABLE I
Motor name plate details
module is used to feed motor and auxiliary power is taken from
linear power supplies.
Rated Power 105 W
Rated Voltage 24 V
Rated Current 6.64 A
Rated Torque 0.250 Nm
Rated Speed 4000 rpm
No Load Speed 6150 rpm
Rotor Inertia 96*10-7 kg.m2

Resistance (L-L) 0.28 Ω

Inductance 0.54 mH
Torque Constant 0.0376 mNm/A
Back EMF Constant 3.94 V/krpm
Pole Pairs 4
Fig. 9. Experimental setup

Motor reference speed is changed from 4500 to 3500 rpm

at time t = 0.5s and it can be seen that controller acted quickly
and achieved steady state in short time duration of 60ms.

Fig. 7. Speed tracking when reference speed changed from 4500 to 3500
rpm Fig. 10. Experimental results
 Motor current, voltage, actual Hall signals and virtual Hall
signals are measured experimentally and the results are
presented in Fig. 10. Experimental result shows clear
agreement between actual Hall signal and virtual Hall signal.
Terminal voltage and current is having PWM frequency
harmonics.

VII. CONCLUSION
Line back EMF sensorless technique based sliding mode
control of brushless DC motor has been discussed and
implemented using cost effective 32 bit ARM M4
microcontroller and a single current sensor. Sensorless starting
is also carried out with Align and Go method. Simulation and
experimental results have demonstrated good performance of
the presented sensorless brushless DC drive. The controller
shows its ability to respond quickly on any change in reference
speed. The low cost microcontroller worked very well in
controlling the motor due to less complexity of algorithm.
Further work can be done with a better starting method and
compensation of delay caused by RC filter.
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