IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 21, NO.

6, NOVEMBER 2006

1727

A Novel Variable Hysteresis Band Current Control

of Three-Phase Three-Level Unity PF Rectifier
With Constant Switching Frequency
Fangrui Liu, Student Member, IEEE, and Ali I. Maswood, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractA Simple and novel variable hysteresis band current

control technique for three-phase three-level unity power factor
(PF) rectifier is proposed in this paper. The hysteresis band is controlled as variations of the rectifier input voltage and output dc link
voltage to achieve constant switching frequency at any operating
conditions, i.e., at rated and below and above the rated conditions.
The rectifier has the characteristic of easy implementation, and
draws a nearly sinusoidal current at unity input PF. Theoretical
and predicted results of its analysis are verified initially through
digital simulation, and confirmed by using an experimental prototype.
Index TermsRectifier, unity power factor (PF), variable hysteresis band.
Fig. 1. Three-phase three-level rectifier.

I. INTRODUCTION

HREE-PHASE diode rectifiers are widely employed in

common acdc power conversion or as an input stage for
conventional rectifier-inverter based ac motor drives. However,
such topology exhibits low input power factor (PF) and injects
large current harmonics into utilities, resulting in increased
distortion of supply voltage, malfunction of sensitive electronic
equipment, increased losses contributing to inefficient use of
electric energy. In recent years, many promising PF correction
techniques have been proposed. Among them, the three-phase
three-level topology was found to be very attractive [1][3].
This topology reduces the voltage stress on the power switches
and only half of dc link voltage is applied across them, allowing
the use of low loss and low cost power devices. This three-phase
three-level rectifier was proposed initially by Kolar in [1], and
was typically controlled with the conventional hysteresis current control. Further work on this control strategy promises the
advantages of easy implementation, good accuracy, and high
robustness. However, it was found later that a conventional
hysteresis current controller with a fixed hysteresis band has
the drawbacks that the modulation frequency varies throughout
the fundamental period, and the instantaneous error can reach
double the value of the hysteresis band due to interference
between the three phases [4][6]. Subsequent research by Zhao
et al., and Ide et al. showed that a space vector control [2]
and double ramp comparison control [3] can overcome the
Manuscript received June 29, 2005; revised October 26, 2005. Recommended
by Associate Editor J. Espinoza.
The authors are with the Center for Advanced Power Electronics, School of
Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798 (e-mail: eamaswood@ntu.edu.sg).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2006.882926

above shortcomings and show a high performance. However,

these methods all need well ascertained complex space vectors
necessitating a complex control circuit and are much too uneconomical to implement. As an alternative, Maswood et al.
[7] proposed a single equidistant firing control for the front-end
rectifier bidirectional switches in a three-phase rectifier-inverter
structure. However, this topology required large input inductors
to achieve unity PF.
This paper proposes a simple and novel variable hysteresis
band current control strategy for three-phase three-level rectifier, where the band is controlled along with the variations of
the rectifier ac input voltage and output dc link voltage in order
to hold the switching frequency constant at any operating conditions. A detailed analysis of the hysteresis band and the interference elimination technique between three phases are explained.
The proposed method is verified by simulations and hardware
experiments.
II. VARIABLE HYSTERESIS BAND CURRENT
CONTROL STRATEGY
The basic structure of a three-phase three-level rectifier is
shown in Fig. 1. It is composed of a diode bridge, three input
inductors, three bidirectional switches and two series-connected
capacitors. The analysis of variable hysteresis band current control strategy will be considered for the case when the mid point
of dc link capacitors is connected to ground, as well as
when that point is floating.
A. DC Link Capacitor mid Point Connected to Ground
When the mid point M of dc capacitors is connected to
ground, each phase of the rectifier can be regarded as indepen-

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 21, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2006

Fig. 2. Current and voltage waveforms with hysteresis current control when
0.

i >

dent. Referring to the topology in Fig. 1, the relationship for

phase a voltage and current can be formulated as
(1)
where
is the voltage of point A referred to the ground. In
2 0, and
2,
practice, it can only take the values of
depending on the switching state of the bidirectional switch
and the direction of current . If is the reference current for
would exist, given
phase a, the fictitious reference voltage
by

Fig. 3. Current and voltage waveforms with hysteresis current control when
0.

i <

. Here,
is the reciprocal of the
for the period
switching frequency .
From (6) and (7) the overall time period for one complete
switching transition can be calculated as
(8)
Substituting (2) into (8), the expression for phase a hysteresis
current band can be written as

(2)

(9)

For hysteresis current control, the difference between the actual

and the reference current can be defined as
(3)

2) Operation During the Negative Interval of : The operation of the hysteresis current controller over one switching cycle
during the negative interval of is shown in Fig. 3.
From (5), this can be expressed mathematically as

(4)

(10)

Subtracting (1) from (2) and substituting (3), one can write

The effect of the input inductor resistance

so that (4) becomes

can be neglected,

for the period 0

, and

(5)
1) Operation During the Positive Interval of : The operation of the hysteresis current controller over one switching cycle
during the positive interval of is shown in Fig. 2.
From (5), this can be expressed mathematically as

(6)
for the period 0

(11)
for the period
.
Similarly the expression for phase a hysteresis current band
can be written as

(12)
Since is sinusoidal and in phase with , the hysteresis current
band for the whole line voltage cycle can be written in a uniform
format as

, and

(7)

(13)

LIU AND MASWOOD: NOVEL VARIABLE HYSTERESIS BAND CURRENT CONTROL

The relationship between hysteresis band and switching freis governed by (13). When the hysteresis band is
quency
fixed as in conventional hysteresis current control, the switching
frequency will be varying. For a desired switching frequency
on the other hand, if the hysteresis band is calculated using
(13), the constant switching frequency operation can be ensured.
Such varying hysteresis band for a fixed frequency operation is
evidenced in Fig. 8. The upper limit of the hysteresis band can
ultimately be selected by the tolerance level of the input current
to low frequency harmonics.

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TABLE I
DC BUS MIDPOINT VOLTAGE v
AT VARIOUS SWITCHING POSITIONS

B. Dc Link Capacitor Mid Point With no Ground Connection

In practice the dc link capacitor middle point M is normally
floated to avoid the third current harmonic (triplen harmonics in
general) in the neutral point, the previous analysis now will be
extended to allow for floating point .
is floating, the relationship for phase a
When point
voltage and current can be reformulated as
(14)
is the voltage between point A and M and
where
referred to ground.
the voltage of point
Subtracting (2) from (14) gives

is

(15)
From (3), the current error
into two parts as [5]

Fig. 4. Schematic diagram for phase a of the variable hysteresis band current
controller.

here can be decoupled

(16)
is non-interacting error and
is interacting error.
where
Hence, (15) can be separated into two sections, as follows:
(17)
(18)
only depends on the corresponding
Equation (17) shows that
, similar to (5). Hence, current non-interacting error
voltage
can be treated in the same way as the error
in the case
of the capacitive mid point
connected to ground. One can
also notice that the three-phase interacting errors are the same
.
it is necessary to determine
, which deTo determine
pends only on
. However, the voltage
is determined
by the supply phase voltages and bidirectional switching patat various switching
terns. Table I illustrates the voltage
positions.
III. CONVERTER IMPLEMENTATION
Fig. 4 shows the schematic diagram of the proposed variable
hysteresis band current controller when the capacitive mid point
is floating. Due to its simplicity, easy implementation, and
popularity of this kind of technique, the rest of the work only

utilizes this control. The feedback current

is initially subtracted from the reference current to produce the current error
. This particular step is identical to a conventional hysteresis
current controller. Furthermore, the interacting error term
is subtracted from
to produce the non-interacting error
,
which is in turn used for the hysteresis controller. The variable hysteresis band is calculated from (13) with the help of
, and
. And the current interacting error
is obtained
from
, which is generated from Table I in combination with
the three-phase supply voltage and three bidirectional switching
patterns.
The control system is implemented using a single-board
ds1103 microprocessor manufactured by dSPACE GmbH and
developed under the integrated development of MATLABSIMULINK RTW provided by The MathWorks. The single
board ds1103 is a real-time interface (RTI) including a PowerPC 604 e processor and a TMS320F240 DSP microprocessor.
The PowerPC 604 e is the arithmetic operation kernel and
TMS320F240 responds for special peripherals handling.
The variable hysteresis band current controller built under
MATLAB-SIMILINK environment for hardware implementation is shown in Fig. 5.
To illustrate the design feasibility of the rectifier, the following specifications are chosen:
1) ac supply: 220 V (line-to-line), 50 Hz;
2) input inductors: 3 5 mH;
3) dc link reference voltage 370 V;
4) dc capacitors: 2 1000 F;
5) rated output power 1 kW.

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Fig. 5. Variable hysteresis band current controller schematic for microprocessor implementation.

Fig. 7. Rectifier supply current and current error for variable hysteresis band
current control.

Fig. 6. Rectifier supply current and current error for conventional fixed hysteresis band current control.

IV. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

To verify the performance of the proposed variable hysteresis
band current control compared with conventional fixed hysteresis band current control, initially a MATLAB-SIMULINK
prototype of the rectifier is developed and its simulation results
are illustrated in Fig. 611.
Fig. 6 shows the rectifier supply current and current error
waveforms for conventional hysteresis current control, where
the fixed current band h is set to 0.5 A to achieve an optimal
switching frequency of 7 kHz. From (14) and Table I, one can
see that the rectifier supply current in one phase is inevitably influenced by the switching patterns of bidirectional switches in
the other two phases. Due to such interaction of three phases, the
supply current instantaneous error is not always limited within
the hysteresis band h and may reach up to 2h, as is evident from some of the random spikes of Fig. 6 (lower trace).
The rectifier supply current and current error waveforms for the
adopted variable hysteresis band current control are shown in
Fig. 7. Referring to Fig. 7 (lower trace) one can notice that the
current error can go beyond h, but to a much smaller extent,
and never to 2h.
The variable hysteresis current band and the rectifier supply
current interacting error and non-interacting error are shown

Fig. 8. Variable hysteresis band.

in Figs. 8 and 9, respectively. The hysteresis band in Fig. 8 is

varying instead of fixed, thus trying to provide required optimal
current error boundary. The non-interacting error (lower trace of
Fig. 9), which is the decoupled part of rectifier supply current
error (lower trace of Fig. 7) without the interacting error (upper
trace of Fig. 9), can be seen to strictly follow the variable hysteresis band (Fig. 8). Thus, the influence of three-phase current
interaction is eliminated and a constant switching frequency is
guaranteed.
The rectifier supply current fast Fourier transforms (FFTs)
obtained from the waveforms of Fig. 6 (upper trace) and Fig. 7
(upper trace) for conventional hysteresis current control and
variable hysteresis band current control are shown in Figs. 10
and 11, respectively.
In conventional fixed hysteresis band current control, the
supply current harmonics are distributed throughout a wide
frequency spectrum from hundreds of Hertz to several kilohertz. However, for variable hysteresis band current control, a
switching frequency is held at 7 kHz in this case, and thus the
supply current harmonics are concentrated around 7 kHz. This
is a major advantage in converter design and operation. High

LIU AND MASWOOD: NOVEL VARIABLE HYSTERESIS BAND CURRENT CONTROL

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Fig. 9. Rectifier supply current interacting error and non-interacting error.

Fig. 12. Rectifier supply current under 50% rated output power. (a) Current
waveform. (b) Current FFT.

Fig. 10. Rectifier supply current FFT for conventional fixed hysteresis band
current control.

Fig. 11. Rectifier supply current FFT for variable hysteresis band current control.

frequency harmonics result in smaller components in

terms of size and ratings. Moreover, absence of low frequency
harmonics avoids possible resonance between tuned ac filters

and the ac network, especially hazardous at lower frequency

around 50 Hz. Additional advantage includes the possibility
of replacing a low frequency tuned filter by a
high-pass one with much lower KVA ratings, and also the
absence of a low frequency resonance.
In order to test the feasibility of this kind of current control
strategy under various load conditions, the rectifier is also operated at below and above its rated power. The converter supply
currents and current FFTs at 50% and 150% of rated output
power are shown in Figs. 12 and 13, respectively.
A general degradation of the supply current total harmonic
distortion (THD) occurs when the rectifier operates at low rated
power conditions. However, it was found that the current THD
at 50% rectifier rated output power is less than 8% and may be
acceptable. We also see that the current harmonics at 50% and
150% rated rectifier output power are both concentrated around
7 kHz. It is evident that variable hysteresis band current control
has a good adaptability to different load conditions. Since implication of (13) is universal, this technique can be also used for
rectifiers operating at other switching frequencies and rectifiers
operating at various rated power levels.
The operation of the proposed variable hysteresis band current control has also been verified by experiment. A prototype
of the rectifier depicted in Fig. 1 with variable hysteresis band

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Fig. 13. Rectifier supply current under 150% rated output power. (a) Current
waveform. (b) Current FFT.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 21, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2006

Fig. 15. Rectifier supply current under rated output power (experimental). (a)
Current waveform. (b) Current FFT.

Fig. 14. Top view of hardware prototype.

current control is constructed and the top view of it is shown in

Fig. 14.
The supply current and its FFT under rectifier rated output
power, obtained from ds1103 based controller, are shown in
Fig. 15. We can see that the main current harmonics are centralized around 7 kHz. In order to show the relative position
of the rectifier supply current with respect to its corresponding

Fig. 16. Rectifier supply current and voltage under rated output power.

voltage for good PF, both waveforms are captured online using
a Fluke-43 power quality analyzer as shown in Fig. 16. The online readings show a unity displacement factor with a high input
PF of 0.99, and very little reactive power.

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Fig. 17. Rectifier supply current under 50% rated output power (experimental).
(a) Current waveform. (b) Current FFT.

Fig. 19. Rectifier supply current under 150% rated output power (experimental). (a) Current waveform. (b) Current FFT.

Fig. 18. Rectifier supply current and voltage under 50% rated output power.

Fig. 20. Rectifier supply current and voltage under 150% rated output power.

The rectifier supply current waveform and its spectrum under

50% rated output power are shown in Fig. 17. Although the
rectifier supply current becomes more distorted at low output
power, the current spectrum harmonics are still concentrated
around 7 kHz. The corresponding rectifier supply voltage and
current waveform along with its performance parameters are

shown in Fig. 18. From the online Fluke meter readings, one can
see that the rectifier input PF is still high at 0.98. The reduction
of PF is mainly due to increase in distortion of the supply current
waveform at light load as is evident in Fig. 17(b). The displacement factor is still at 1 and no phase shift between voltage and
current occurs.

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The rectifier supply current waveform and its spectrum under

150% rated output power are shown in Fig. 19. The current
waveform is less distorted as compared to Fig. 17 and the current
harmonic spectrum is also concentrated around 7 kHz. The corresponding rectifier supply voltage and current waveform along
with its performance parameters are shown in Fig. 20. The converter input PF is as high as 0.99.
V. CONCLUSION
A fast acting microprocessor based method of implementing
a variable hysteresis band current controller for a three-phase
three-level rectifier operating at constant switching frequency
has been described. Key advantages of variable hysteresis band
current control over the traditional fixed hysteresis band current control are demonstrated and are found to be very advantageous. The controller operates by creating a variable hysteresis
band envelope, and then compensating for the interaction between phases that occurs when the dc link capacitor mid point
is floating. Absence of any input inductance or filter result in
a lightweight structure. Such an input current control technique
in general is suitable in most three-phase acdc conversions, but
is found to be very attractive in rectifier based dc motor drives,
in front end rectifier for rectifier-inverter based ac drives, and in
UPS intended for applications where power quality is an important issue. The proposed controller also exhibits a good adaptability to load variations. The three-phase rectifier with the proposed controller shows features of consistent unity PF, high reliability and simple control.
REFERENCES
[1] J. W. Kolar and F. C. Zach, A novel three-phase utility interface
minimizing line current harmonics of high-power telecommunications
rectifier modules, in Proc. Telecommun. Energy Conf., 1994, pp.
367374.
[2] Y. Zhao, Y. Li, and T. A. Lipo, Force commutated three level boost
type rectifier, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 155161,
Jan./Feb. 1995.

[3] P. Ide, N. Froehleke, and H. Grotstollen, Investigation of low cost

control schemes for a selected 3-level switched mode rectifier, in Proc.
Telecommun. Energy Conf., 1997, pp. 413418.
[4] M. P. Kazmierkowski and L. Malesani, Current control techniques
for three-phase voltage-source PWM converter: a survey, IEEE Trans.
Ind. Electron., vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 691703, Oct. 1998.
[5] Q. Yao and D. G. Holmes, A simple, novel method for variable-hysteresis-band current control of a three phase inverter with constant
switching frequency, in Proc. IEEE-IAS Conf., 1993, pp. 11221129.
[6] T. Chun and M. Choi, Development of adaptive hysteresis band current control strategy of PWM inverter with constant switching frequency, in Proc. APEC, 1996, pp. 194199.
[7] A. I. Maswood, A. K. Yusop, and M. A. Rahman, A novel suppressedlink rectifier-inverter topology with unity power factor, IEEE Trans.
Power Electron., vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 692700, Sep. 2002.
Fangrui Liu (S03) received the B.Eng. degree in
electrical engineering from Huazhong University of
Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2002 and
the Ph.D. degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2005.
He is currently with the Power Electronics Research Center, Huazhong University of Science and
Technology. His research interest is in the field of
power factor correction for high-power rectifiers,
and inverter control.

Ali I. Maswood (SM04) received the B.Eng. and

M.Eng. degrees (with first class honors) from the
Moscow Power Engineering Institute, Moscow,
Russia and the Ph.D. degree from Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Having taught in Canada for a number of years,
he joined Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 1991 where he is currently an Associate
Professor. He has authored several international
journal and conference publications. He is the
chapter-author of the Power Electronics, Handbook
(New York: Academic, 2002). His work in FROSIN switch mode power
supply gave rise to several patents. His research interests are in power electronics, particularly in converter generated harmonics, novel inverter topology,
advanced PWM switching, and power quality.
Dr. Maswood is actively involved in the local IAS/PELS chapter and in the
Steering Committee of the IEEE Power Electronics and Drives (PEDS) Conference.