In this paper, a novel dead time compensation method is presented which produces inverter output voltages equal to reference voltages. An experimental result is also presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. It shows that the compensation of the dead time is possible up to a sub-microsecond range. And the reference voltage can be used as a feedback value, which is essential for sensorless vector control and flux estimation. The method is based on space vector PWM strategy and can be carried out automatically by an inverter controller for initial set-up without any extra hardware.