A novel motor speed calculation method using square wave speed sensor signals via fast Fourier transform

This paper presents a novel motor speed measurement method and experimental results using the fast Fourier transform (FFT). Motor speed is obtained using the square wave output signal of a speed sensor. In the proposed method, the speed can be measured in a wide range, and transient speed changes can also be clearly observed. The experiments were conducted during start-up and in steady state. The sampled speed data were transformed to frequency spectrums using the FFT. The frequency, which corresponds to the maximum amplitude in the spectrum, was used to calculate the motor speed. The test results show that the proposed method is very useful.