A novel compound-excited brushless DC motor with polygonal circular winding is proposed in this paper. The key is that DC excitation is effectively coupled with PM excitation, significantly improving the torque density per PM volume and improving the machine flux weakening performance in the proposed design. This proposed design provides simplified control characteristics similar to a compound-excited DC motor. Further, the flux weakening of the proposed machine can be smoothly achieved using polygonal closed-loop circular winding and a lagging slot winding shifting method.