Three-phase PWM synchronous rectifiers without linevoltage sensors

B.-H.Kwon, J.-H.Youm, J.-W.Lim, K.-W.Seok and G.-Y.Jeong

Abstract: A line-voltage-sensorless control for three-phase pulse-width-modulated (PWM)
synchronous rectifiers is presented. A line synchronisation and unity power factor control are
described. Indirect synchronisation without sensing the line voltage allows a standard vectorcontrolled inverter to be used as a synchronous rectifier without requiring any additional hardware.
Furthermore, the line synchronisation can be operated properly under line-voltage distortion or
notching and line-frequency variation. It is shown via experimental results that the proposed
controller gives good performance for the synchronous rectifier.

Introduction

Vector-controlled PWM inverter technology is emerging as

the industry workhorse for variable-speed AC drives. The
inverter section of a PWM AC drive controller converts a
fixed DC voltage to a variable voltage and variable frequency. A multisection AC drive system typically uses a
DC bus supply that is common to multiple inverters. ACto-DC converters using thyristors for this common DC
supply have the inherent drawbacks that power factor
decreases when the firing angle increases and that, since the
content of harmonics of the line current is relatively large,
the size of the filter circuit becomes bulky. The synchronous rectifier offers several advanced features such as sinusoidal input currents at unity power factor, bidirectional
power flow, small filter circuit, and high quality DC output
voltage. The synchronous rectifier or PWM voltagesource rectifier is the new alternative technique for AC-toDC power conversion. It draws a continuous sinusoidal
current from the AC supply under all load conditions. This
DC bus supply is essentially a PWM inverter with the normal AC output terminals connected to the AC line supply,
and the usual DC input terminals become the common DC
supply connection point.
The synchronous rectifier uses the same hardware as the
PWM inverter. Its control strategy includes a vector regulator made up of hardware and software to rectify the AC
line supply synchronously and provide the required DC
bus voltage. One basic difference between the synchronous
rectifier and vector-controlled PWM inverter is the
firmware which provides synchronous rectification. In the
synchronous rectifier, the phase of the AC line is sensed
and communicated to the regulator for line synchronisation. It is very convenient to control the synchronous rectifier without sensing the line voltage. In a standard vector IEE, 1999

controlled inverter, synchronisation directly from the line

voltage is not possible. Therefore indirect synchronisation
without sensing the line voltage allows a standard vectorcontrolled inverter to be used as a synchronous rectifier
without requiring any additional hardware. Furthermore,
line synchronisation cannot be operated properly under
line-voltage distortion or notching and line-frequency variation, though the line synchronisation in [1] can be made
using a digital phase-locked loop where line signals are
derived via photo-isolators from zero crossings of line voltages. Alternatively, the line voltages can be measured
directly for the reference waveforms [210]. In this case, the
current reference waveforms are multiplied with the isolated line voltages. This method gives rapid dynamics, but
it requires precise analogue signals. In both cases, the line
voltages must be free of significant distortion to give reliable control and low current harmonics.
In this paper, a line-voltage-sensorless control for threephase PWM synchronous rectifiers is presented. A line synchronisation and unity power factor control are described.
Indirect synchronisation without sensing the line voltage
allows a standard vector-controlled inverter to be used as a
synchronous rectifier without requiring any additional
hardware. Furthermore, the line synchronisation can be
operated properly under line-voltage distortion or notching
and line-frequency variation. It is shown via experimental
results that the proposed controller gives good performance
for the line-voltage-sensorless synchronous rectifier.

Fig.1

Three-phase synchronous rectifier

IEE Proceedings online no. 19990465

DOI:10.1049/ip-epa:19990465

Analysis of the synchronous rectifier

Paper received 5th November 1998

The authors are with the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering,
Pohang University of Science and Technology, San 31 Hyoja-dong, Pohang
790-784, Kyungbuk, South Korea
632

The three-phase synchronous rectifier provides smooth

powering and regeneration capability with six semiconductor power switches in a single three-phase full-bridge conIEE Proc.-Electr. Power Appl., Vol. 146, No. 6, November 1999

and the input voltages in the synchronous d q frame are

expressed by

It is desirable that the q-axis current iq is zero for unity

power factor. Then the q-axis current iq is controlled with
the zero reference current i *q = 0. Since the active power
supplied from the input

Fig.2

Coordinates for the three-phase synchronous rectifier

figuration as shown in Fig. 1. Its regulator can control

power factor close to unity, or it can be set leading or lagging. The inductor L limits the magnitude of the input ripple current, thus reducing harmonics, and it also serves as
an energy-storage device to allow the overall circuit to act
as a boost rectifier.
The input is a three-phase voltage supply as follows:

is directly proportional to the d-axis current id, the d-axis

reference current i d* is generated from the proportional and
integral (PI)-type voltage controller for the output voltage
regulation. The additional feedforward control of the load
current improves the dynamic response of the DC bus voltage [5].
The voltage equations (eqns. 2) transformed from the
stationary a b c frame to the synchronous d q frame
are as follows:

To make the input currents track the reference currents, the

PI-type current controllers can be utilised. However, the PI
current controllers do not work well as rapid tracking controllers for the coupled system in eqns. 8. To avoid this
problem, the following current controllers are more effective to control:
where E and are the maximum phase voltage and angular frequency of the power source, respectively. The coordinates for the three-phase synchronous rectifier are
shown in Fig. 2. The voltage equations in the stationary
a b c frame are

where ia, ib and ic are the input currents and va, vb and vc
are the input voltages of the synchronous rectifier. The
voltage equations in the stationary x y frame are given by

where the output signals vd and vq of the current controllers

only generate transient additional voltages required to

maintain the sinusoidal input currents. With the addition of
the overall current controller (eqns. 9) to the rectifier
(eqns. 8) which is originally a coupled dynamic system, the
inputoutput relations of the rectifier become first-order
decoupled linear dynamic systems with easy controllability
as follows:

and the voltage equations in the synchronous d q frame

are given by

The input voltages in the stationary x y frame are

expressed by

IEE Proc.-Electr. Power Appl., Vol. 146, No. 6, November 1999

Thus the overall current controller (eqns. 9) in the synchronous d q frame relaxes the burden of the PI current controllers and improves the input current waveform. Fig. 3
shows the decoupled control diagram for the synchronous
rectifier.
Provided the current controller (eqns. 9) maintains control of the input currents, the voltage components eliminating the inductor-voltage drop from eqns. 9 generally follow
the input voltage components and so may be utilised to
estimate the d q synchronous reference frame. Fig. 4
633

Fig.3

Decoupled control diagram for the synchronous rectifier

Eqn. 12 holds under the assumption that the voltage

components E + v d and vq represent the estimated
d -axis and q -axis components of the input voltage. This is
not the case when the system is first operated. Without a
proper estimation at start-up, the input phase reference
would start with zero and so it would probably not lock on
to the supply. Therefore, the estimation s of the input
phase reference at start-up time t = ts is necessary. The estimation of the initial input phase reference s can be
obtained by applying zero voltage for a short period Te at
the rectifier input. Assuming that the input currents are
zero before zero voltage is applied at the rectifier input, the
input currents ixs and iys in the stationary x y frame at
start-up time t = ts are given by

Since the supply voltages ex and ey are almost constant during the short period Te, they are given by
Relation between the estimated d q reference frame and d q synchronous frame

Fig.4

shows the relation between the estimated d q reference

frame and d q synchronous frame synchronised to the
input phase. The error angle between two reference frames
is determined from d q voltage components vq and E +
v d in the estimated reference frame as shown in Fig. 4.
The error angle is then given by

The estimated synchronising frequency and phase reference are then corrected as follows:

where the input currents ixs and iys in the stationary x y

frame at start-up time ts are obtained as

These equations are used to estimate the initial input phase

reference s at start-up time ts as follows:

Thus the estimation of the initial input phase reference s

at start-up time ts makes the error angle almost zero
under the synchronising control. Therefore the synchronising controller can be modified for simplicity as follows:
where kpf and kif are the compensating gains to synchronise
to the line angular frequency . Fig. 5 shows the overall
control diagram for the synchronous rectifier including a
line synchronisation without sensing the line voltage
directly. The synchronisation technique described does not
require additional hardware.

Fig.5
634

= kpf/E and kif = kif/E. Using similar procedure,

where kpf

Overall control diagram of the three-phase synchronous rectifier

IEE Proc.-Electr. Power Appl., Vol. 146, No. 6, November 1999

another angle p of the input phase reference at time t = ts

Tp can be obtained. Then, the initial estimation s of the
input angular frequency at start-up time t = ts is given by

1800rev/min. While the induction motor is decelerating,

the synchronous rectifier is in regenerating mode.

Experimental results

The overall control block diagram of the three-phase synchronous rectifier shown in Fig. 5 is implemented using a
single-chip microcontroller, Intel 80196MC. The outputs of
the space-vector modulator are switching times of each leg
for three-phase PWM pulses and three-phase PWM pulses
are generated through the pulse generator in the 80196MC.
The system is divided into two parts: the controller and
power circuit. The controller part includes the microcontroller running the proposed control algorithms and driver
circuits for driving insulated-gate bipolar transistors
(IGBTs). These two circuits are isolated by photocouplers.
The power circuit part consists of six IGBTs as the power
switching device, an inductor L at the input side and a
capacitor C at the output side. The power semiconductor
switches are operated with the switching frequency fs =
10kHz. The line-voltage-sensorless synchronous rectifier is
implemented with the following parameters:

Fig.7

Dynamic response of the controller with an initial estimation error

Phase-angle error = 25
Scales: Vdc, 100V/div; va, 50V/div; current, 10A/div; time, 10ms/div

Fig.8

Output voltage and line current in case of the load-current variation

from 10A to 20A

Scales: voltage, 100V/div; current, 20A/div; time, 50ms/div

The compensating gains of the current and frequency controllers are given by

Fig. 6 shows the steady-state input voltage and line-current waveforms of the synchronous rectifier. The current
waveform obtained without sensing the line voltage is the
same as that obtained when sensing the line voltage directly
and unity power factor is accomplished in any controller.
Thus, the controller without sensing the line voltage does
not give any degeneration in steady-state performance.

Fig.9

Fig.6

Experimental waveforms of steady-state input voltage and line current

Scales: voltage, 50V/div; current, 10A/div; time, 10ms/div

Fig. 7 shows the dynamic response of the controller without sensing the line voltage with an intended initial estimation error (phase-angle error 25). Thus without exact
estimation (eqn. 17) of the initial phase s at start-up time
ts, the proposed controller makes the line current synchronise to the line voltage. When the load current is changed
from 10A to 20A, the output voltage and input line current
are shown in Fig. 8. The ripple of output voltage is very
small. Fig. 9 shows the input line current and source-voltage waveforms when the speed of the induction motor as
the load of the synchronous rectifier changes from 1800 to
IEE Proc.-Electr. Power Appl., Vol. 146, No. 6, November 1999

Input voltage and line current at the powering and regeneration mode

Scales: voltage, 50V/div; current, 10A/div; time, 20ms/div

Concluding remarks

A line-voltage-sensorless control for three-phase PWM synchronous rectifiers is presented. A line synchronisation and
unity power factor control are described. Indirect synchronisation without sensing the line voltage allows a standard
vector-controlled inverter to be used as a synchronous rectifier without requiring any additional hardware. The initial
reference frequency and angle for the line voltage are estimated at start-up. The line synchronisation can be operated
properly under line-voltage distortion or notching and linefrequency variation. It is shown via experimental results
that the proposed controller gives good performance for
the line-voltage-sensorless synchronous rectifier.
5

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IEE Proc.-Electr. Power Appl., Vol. 146, No. 6, November 1999