Electrically excited or wound rotor synchronous machines are mainly associated with power generation. However, electrically excited synchronous machines (hereinafter synchronous machines) are being increasingly used in variable speed drives, especially in high-power drives where their advantages over other machines come to the fore. Namely, the main advantages of synchronous machines over induction, but also other types of machines, are certainly high efficiency (up to 97% in large synchronous machines) and their reactive power control capability with which they are able to significantly correct the power factor and thus reduce unwanted losses and costs in industrial power systems with a multitude of inductive loads. At the same time, highperformance responses of a synchronous machine can be achieved by applying the so-called vector control. The basic principle of vector or field-oriented control is well known as it has already been a subject of many landmark books. In short, vector control of AC machines, whose foundations were laid in the early 1970s by Karl Hasse and Felix Blaschke, is based on representing the space vector of the stator current in a rotating reference frame related to the space vector of one of the magnetic fluxes in the machine. Such a representation of the stator current space vector allows its decomposition into two components: a flux producing component and a torque producing component. Therefore, by controlling these two stator current components, it is possible to achieve a high-performance decoupled control of the machine's torque and flux, like in a case of a compensated separately excited DC machine. This master thesis was written as a result of cooperation between The Faculty of Engineering and Danieli Automation S.p.A. on the development of advanced control structures for electric drives. The aim of this master thesis was the development of a vector control structure for an electrically excited synchronous machine originally intended to be fed from a cycloconverter. Therefore, in Chapter Two of this master thesis, an overview of the reference frame theory is given, based on which a two-reaction (dq) model of the synchronous machine is derived. Chapter Three briefly describes the operating principles of a cycloconverter. Chapter Four is dedicated to the development of a vector control structure for a synchronous machine. This chapter describes the principle of vector control of a synchronous machine based on the machine's space vector diagram, the associated control structure, as well as usual methods for estimating the flux used for orientation. Since the developed control structure is a multiloop one, the process of determining the optimal parameters of the controllers is shown. The performance of the developed vector control structure has been tested on a simulation model built in PLECS. The obtained simulation results are presented in Chapter Six. In Chapter Seven, a simulation model of the three-phase cycloconverter and its associated control is described. The results regarding the simulation of cycloconverter operation are presented in Chapter Eight. Finally, concluding remarks are made in the last, ninth chapter.