This paper deals with the latest developments in Permanent Magnet Brushless DC (PMBLDC) motor drives. A comprehensive account of the state-of-the-art on types of construction of the motor, closed loop controllers in position, speed and current/torque control and recent trends in inverters, sensors etc. are given. Techniques for mechanical sensors elimination are discussed in detail. Special efforts made to reduce torque ripples, noise and vibrations are described. The impact of microelectronics through integrated chips used in the control of PMBLDC motor drives is given. The increasing applications of this drive due to improved performance and its cost reduction are also enlisted.

This paper deals with the design, modeling, analysis and implementation of unity power factor (UPF) based electronic ballast for a fluorescent lamp (FL). The proposed electronic ballast uses a boost AC–DC converter as a power factor corrector (PFC) to improve the power quality at the input ac mains. In this singlestage UPF based electronic ballast, boost PFC converter and a half bridge series resonant inverter (HBSRI) share a common power switch. Thus one power switch is reduced as compared to the conventional two-stage approach. The design, modeling, analysis and implementation of this topology were carried out in MATLAB-Simulink environment for a T8 36 W, 220 V, 50 Hz fluorescent lamp. The switching frequency was kept morethan the resonant frequency of the inverter, to ensure the zero voltage switching (ZVS) operation of both power switches. This resulted in reduction of high frequency switching losses. The power quality parameters such as displacement power factor (DPF), distortion factor (DF), power factor (PF), crest factor (CF) and total harmonicdistortion of ac mains current (THDi) were evaluated to analyze the performance of proposed electronic ballast. Test results on a developed prototype of PFC electronic ballast were included to validate the design and simulated results.