Permanent magnet machines are replacing the use of induction motor and synchronous motor in recent years. The performances of conventional machines fail when speed regulation is required. Industries often require high starting torque and simple speed controllability. Permanent Magnet Synchronous Reluctance Motors are much preferred due to several characteristics like easy controllability and efficient operation. Magnets with high field intensity like neodymium-iron-boron are now a day's available at affordable cost. Thus the design of permanent magnet machines is becoming cheaper and popular. The performance of permanent magnet machines mostly rely on rotor design. In this paper for improving the performance of the machine, the rotor construction with different arrangement of flux barriers embedded with permanent magnets is discussed. Three models are considered for analysis and a comparative study of locating flux barriers with magnets at different locations are studied. From the results an improved permanent magnet synchronous reluctance motor is proposed. The performance results are obtained theoretically and experimental work was carried on the proposed design. Finite Element Method is used to analyze the design parameters. © 2013 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved. © 2022 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.