Initial Rotor Position Estimation for Brushless Synchronous Starter/Generators

In this paper, an initial rotor position estimation method that is independent of the magnetic saliency is proposed for the main generator (MG) of the brushless synchronous starter/generator (BSSG). The stator of the MG works as a transmitter and the rotor of the MG works as a receiver, i.e., signals are injected into the stator windings and response signals of the field winding are regarded as indicators of the initial rotor position of the MG. Due to the brushless structure, direct measurement of the field winding of the MG is difficult. Thus, a practical approach to estimate the information of the field winding of the MG is proposed in this paper. Then, the initial rotor position of the MG is estimated with signal injection. The effectiveness of this method is verified by experimental results.