Dead Time Effect in Two-Level Space Vector PWM Voltage Source Inverters with Large Current Ripple

Xiaolin Mao, Raja Ayyanar

School of Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering Arizona State Unversity Tempe, AZ, USA xiaolin.mao@asu.edu, rayyanar@asu.edu
Abstract The analysis of the effect of dead time in a PWM inverter is important to realize its impact on the low frequency harmonics in the inverter and for appropriate dead time compensator design. This paper analyzes the dead-time effect in space-vector PWM (SVM) inverters considering various SVM schemes that include some non-conventional SVMs and even hybrid SVMs. Also, the effect of the current zero-crossing zone in applications with large current ripple is considered in the analysis and it has been found that this inclusion is important. Experimental results are presented that agree with the analysis.

Amit Kumar Jain

Peregrine Power LLC Wilsonville, OR, USA ajain@peregrinepower.com

II.

ANALYSIS OF DEAD-TIME EFFECT IN SVPWM INVERTERS

It is established that the voltage error (deviation of the actual voltage from its ideal value) of one phase leg of a voltage source inverter due to the dead time, averaged over a switching cycle, can be expressed as [1]:

V = sgn( i )

N swTd Vd Tsw

(1)

I.

INTRODUCTION

Dead times are inserted in the gate pulses of an inverter to prevent dc bus short-circuit. However, dead time also causes harmonics in the inverter and these harmonics, mainly at low frequency, cannot be filtered by the capacitor filter that is mainly designed for filtering high frequency ripple. The dead time effect on the conventional space-vector PWM (SVM) and the design of dead time compensators have been discussed in the literature such as [1]-[3]. Recently new SVM sequences based on active state division and hybrid PWM schemes that employ multiple sequences within a fundamental cycle have been proposed to reduce the current THD and/or switching loss performance [4]-[6]. This paper analyzes the effect of dead time for these non-conventional SVM schemes and presents some experimental results for validation. This paper also considers the effect of the zero-crossing zone in the inductor current on the dead time effect. This analysis is especially important for some applications where the inductor current ripple is purposely designed to be large to achieve ZVS within the current zeros-crossing zone and to reduce inductor size (while the resulting large current ripple is filtered out using a larger capacitor).

where Nsw is the number of switchings for that leg during a switching cycle, Td is the dead time, Tsw is the switching period, Vd is the dc link voltage, and sgn(i) indicates the direction of the current (as shown in Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 One leg of a voltage source inverter

When applying (1) to SVM sequences other than the traditional one ( i.e., 0127), Nsw is not necessary always 1. For example, for the bus-clamped sequences, i.e., 012 and 721, at any given time there is one leg that has no switching, i.e., Nsw = 0. For the so-called active-state-division sequence, i.e., 0121, 7271, 1012, and 2721 [6], at any given time there is one leg that has no switching (Nsw = 0), another leg that has single switching (Nsw = 1), and the remaining leg that has double switching (Nsw = 2). For the applications in which the current ripple is large, and hence the zero-crossing zone (portion of the fundamental cycle where the current of the inverter crosses zero in each switching cycle) is significant compared to a fundamental

This work was supported in part by funding provided by Peregrine Power LLC and Office of Naval Research under grant N00014-08-C-0253 (Phase II SBIR).

978-1-4244-8085-2/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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 N swTd Vd , when i is above the zero - crossing zone T sw V = 0, when i is within th e zero - crossing zone N swTd Vd , when i is below the zero - crossing zone Tsw
cycle, the effect of the zero-crossing zone on the dead-time effect must be considered. During a switching cycle within the zero-crossing zone, generally, the upper leg turns on when i < 0 , and the lower leg turns on when i > 0. In both switching transitions, the dead time does not cause a voltagesecond error. Thus, considering the zero-crossing zone, the voltage error becomes (2). For typical applications of SVM inverters where the neutral of three phase system load is floating, the common mode part of the V of the three phases has no effect on the harmonics of line current and line-to-line voltage. This is assumed in this paper. Thus, we are only concerned with

(3)

effect for a hybrid sequence 2721/1012 for Vd = 132V, Td = 300ns, and Tsw = 50s. Here the SVM name 2721/1012 means using 2721 for 0<<30 and 1012 for 30<<60 in Sector 1, where is the angle of the reference voltage vector. The same naming rules apply for other hybrid SVMs mentioned in this paper. Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 show the voltage error waveforms and the corresponding total harmonics (TH) due to the dead-time effect for various SVMs and hybrid SVMs as discussed in [6] for two cases: one with 0 zero-crossing zone (i.e., current ripple is negligible compared to the fundamental current) and the other with the actual zero-crossing zone (the zero-crossing zone may vary with different SVMs) in the V calculation. The total harmonics is defined as

= V A V A

V A + VB + VC 3

(2)

Based on the above discussion about the nonconventional SVM sequences and current zero-crossing zone, Fig. 2 shows the voltage error due to the dead-time
3 2 1 0 -1 10 iA (A) 0 ZC -10 2 0 50 100 150 ZC 200 250 300 ZC 350 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 2 0 0 0

VA (V)

Gate A

0 -2 2

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

VA ' (V)

0 -2

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

t ()
Fig. 2 Voltage error introduced by dead times for a hybrid sequence 2721/1012. (the numbers 0, 1, 2 on the gate pulses indicates the number of switchings per switching cycle; ZC labels the zero-crossing zone.)

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2 1

SVM = 0127, ZC = 0, TH = 0.2216V

2 1

SVM = 0127, ZC = 34, TH = 0.1184V

VA ' (V)

VA ' (V)

0 -1 -2

0 -1 -2

100

200 t ()

300

100

200

300

t ()
SVM = 012, ZC = 34, TH = 0.3714V

2 1

SVM = 012, ZC = 0, TH = 0.4341V

2 1

VA ' (V)

0 -1 -2

VA ' (V)
0 100 200 t () 300

0 -1 -2

100

200

300

t ()
SVM = 0121, ZC = 26, TH = 0.4565V

2 1

SVM = 0121, ZC = 0, TH = 0.6442V

2 1

VA ' (V)

0 -1 -2

VA ' (V)
0 100 200 t () 300

0 -1 -2

100

200

300

t ()
SVM = 1012, ZC = 34, TH = 0.1614V

2 1

SVM = 1012, ZC = 0, TH = 0.2476V

2 1

VA ' (V)

0 -1 -2

VA ' (V)
0 100 200 t () 300

0 -1 -2

100

200

300

t () Fig. 3 Voltage error due to dead-time effect for various SVMs (ZC means zero-crossing range, TH means total harmonics).

681

2 1

SVM = 721/012, ZC = 0, TH = 0.4341V

2 1

SVM = 721/012, ZC = 34, TH = 0.3714V

VA ' (V)

0 -1 -2

VA ' (V)
0 100 200 t () 300

0 -1 -2

100

200

300

t ()
SVM = 0121/7212, ZC = 26, TH = 0.6022V

2 1

SVM = 0121/7212, ZC = 0, TH = 0.8206V

2 1

VA ' (V)

0 -1 -2

VA ' (V)
0 100 200 t () 300

0 -1 -2

100

200

300

t ()
SVM = 2721/1012, ZC = 34, TH = 0.3927V

2 1

SVM = 2721/1012, ZC = 0, TH = 0.1975V

2 1

VA ' (V)

0 -1 -2

VA ' (V)
0 100 200 t () 300

0 -1 -2

100

200

300

t () Fig. 4 Voltage error due to dead-time effect for some hybrid SVMs (ZC means zero-crossing range, TH means total harmonics).

) 2 (V1) 2 TH = MS ( V ) (VDC

(4)

and where MS ( V ) is the mean square of V, VDC V1 are the DC and fundamental component of V, respectively.
Fig. 5 compares the waveform of the voltage error V between the two SVMs, the conventional 0127 and the hybrid SVM 2721/1012. This hybrid sequence 2721/1012 is compared here due to its advantage of significantly reduced high frequency ripple with interleaving than the conventional sequence 0127, as seen from the experimental results presented in Section III. It is observed from Fig. 5, although 2721/1012 has approximately the same total harmonics as

0127 when the zero-crossing zone is negligible, it has significantly larger low frequency harmonics than the latter when the zero-crossing zone is significant. Thus, it is important to consider the zero-crossing zone in the dead-time effect analysis for applications with high current ripple. III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

Fig. 6 shows the circuit schematic of an experimental prototype which consists of two interleaved parallel SVM inverters. Fig. 7 shows the experiment waveforms of phase A individual inductor current and phase A total current for the SVMs 0127 and 2721/1012. By design, the individual inductor current has large ripple. It can be seen from Fig. 7 that the SVM 2721/1012 is significantly better than 0127 in reducing high frequency current ripple through interleaving.

682

2 1

zero-crossing range = 0 0127

2 1

zero-crossing range = 34 0127 2721/1012

VA ' (V)

0 -1 -2

VA ' (V)

2721/1012

0 -1

-2 200 300 0 100 200 300 t () t () Fig. 5 Comparison of voltage error due to dead-time effect between two SVMs: 0127 and 2721/1012: (a) current zero-crossing zone range = 0; (b) current zero crossing zone range = 34.

100

However, the THD of the line-to-line voltage for the SVM 2721/1012 is slightly higher than that for SVM 0127 (as shown in Fig. 8). This is due to the fact that while the high frequency harmonics has been significantly reduced by the capacitor filter, the low frequency harmonics due to the dead-time effect still remains, as shown by the spectrum. This agrees with the above analysis that the dead time causes more harmonics for SVM 2721/1012 than for 0127.

REFERENCES
[1] Seung-Gi Jeong and Min-Ho Park, The analysis and compensation of dead-time effects in PWM inverters, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 108-114, April 1991. B. A. Welchko, S. E. Schulz, S. Hiti, Effects and compensation of dead-time and minimum pulse-width limitations in two-level PWM voltage source inverters," Industry Applications Conference, 2006. 41st IAS Annual Meeting., vol.2, pp.889-896, Oct. 8-12 2006. Jia Wu, F. C. Lee, D. Boroyevich, Elimination of low-frequency harmonics caused by PWM in a three-phase soft-switched boost rectifier, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol.38, no.2, pp.483-489, Mar/Apr 2002. G. Narayanan, H. K. Krishnamurthy, D. Zhao, and R. Ayyanar, Advanced bus-clamping PWM techniques based on space vector approach, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 974984, Jul. 2006. D. Zhao, G. Narayanan, and R. Ayyanar, Switching loss characteristics of sequences involving active state division in space vector based PWM, in Proc. IEEE-APEC, Anaheim, CA, Feb. 2004, pp. 479485. G. Narayanan, D. Zhao, H. K. Krishnamurthy, R. Ayyanar, and V. T. Ranganathan, Space vector based hybrid PWM techniques for reduced current ripple, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol.55, no.4, pp.1614-1627, April 2008.

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

Fig. 6 Circuit schematic of the experimental prototype.

I.

CONCLUSION

This paper presents a method for analyzing the dead-time effect in SVM inverters considering various SVM schemes that include some non-conventional SVMs and even hybrid SVMs. Also, the effect of the current zero-crossing zone in applications with large current ripple is considered in the analysis and it has been found that this inclusion is important. It has been observed that the zero-crossing zone increase the harmonics for some SVMs while reduces it for others. Experimental results comparing two SVMs are presented that agree with the analysis.

683

(a)

(b)

Fig. 7 Experimental waveforms for phase A individual inductor current, iA1, and phase A total current, iA, at nominal voltage (ma = 0.85) and nominal current for (a) the conventional scheme (0127), and (b) the hybrid scheme (2721/1012) (scale: iA12A/div, iA4A/div, time5ms/div).
Fundamental (60Hz)= 139.17 , THD= 2.14% 2 Mag (% of Fundamental) 1.5 1 0.5 0
Mag (% of Fundamental) 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 Fundamental (60Hz)= 139.31 , THD= 2.21%

500

1000 Frequency (Hz)

1500

2000

500

1000 Frequency (Hz)

1500

2000

(a)

(b)

Fig. 8 Spectrum of the measured line to line voltage for two different SVMs: (a) 0127, and (b) 2721/1012.

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