IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 22, NO.

1, JANUARY 2007

223

A Novel Method for Selective Harmonic Elimination

in Power Electronic Equipment
Vladimir Blasko, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThe algorithms for adaptive canceling of selected harmonic components have been well developed in digital signal processing. In those applications, filtering is a primary objective.
However, in power electronic applications control, with objectives
like fast response of system on reference and disturbance change, is
of primary importance. This paper provides a novel and a systematic design approach for applying signal processing methods (like
modified adaptive selective harmonic elimination algorithms) as
an addition to conventional control. Thus, both control objectives
like fast transient response and efficient harmonic (disturbance) filtering are achieved. The filtering algorithm does not interfere and
has minimal impact on the stability of the primary control loop. Its
sole function is to eliminate undesirable higher harmonic components from selected variable (current or voltage) and it requires
only knowledge of the frequency of the component to be eliminated. The methodology is applicable for a wide range of equipment like uninterrupted power systems, regenerative converters,
active power filters, etc. The application of the proposed method
in a regenerative voltage source converter for dead time compensation is used as an example for illustrating its effectiveness and
design procedure.

I. INTRODUCTION

LANTS like three phase regenerative converters, uninterruptible power supplies, motor drives, etc. are often implemented with proportionalintegral (PI) or similar regulators
for control. The controllers are designed to provide the necessary dynamics required by the system in terms of bandwidth and
step response. However, there are disturbances in the system that
create harmonic distortion of control variables. The examples
of sources of disturbances are: a) blanking time of pulsewidth
modulation (PWM), b) distortion of the utility voltage due to
notching created by silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) bridges,
and c) nonlinearities in the system like saturation of reactors,
nonlinear loads etc. The bandwidths of regulators when implemented in a discrete domain/microprocessor are limited by the
sampling rate and are usually not sufficiently high enough to
provide satisfactory rejection of such a high frequency of periodic disturbances (above 300 Hz).
One way to cope with the limited bandwidth of regulators is
to use predictive regulators [1] which are able to reach the desired value in one or two sampling intervals. However, usage of
predictive and dead bit regulators requires knowledge of plant
parameters. Additionally, predictive regulators lack the robustness to disturbances that are often random in nature and hard to
incorporate in the model. The alternative to fast regulators is to
Manuscript received February 6, 2006; revised April 16, 2006. Recommended for publication by Associate Editor J. Enslin.
The author is with the Otis Elevator Company, Farmington, CT 06032 USA
(e-mail: vladimir.blasko@otis.com)
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2006.886599

use synchronous regulators working in the reference frame rotating with the circular frequency of the harmonic component
that should be eliminated, [2], [3], [4]. For practical purposes
synchronous reference frame regulators can be transformed and
implemented in a stationary frame of reference preserving their
original features from synchronous reference frame. Thus, harmonic components can be selectively eliminated. The generic
synchronous reference frame regulators generally, when applied
for selective harmonic elimination, require low pass filtering
with associated delay and are more suited for three then for
single-phase applications.
In [5], a generic adaptive noise-canceling algorithm for
elimination/filtering of single frequency from signal, as used
in digital signal processing (DSP) [6], was introduced. The
algorithm was modified to take plant characteristics into account. The methodology was developed for combining the filter
with the already existing regular proportionalintegral (PI)
controls of the plant.
In this paper, the additional theoretical treatment and further
improvements to increase speed of convergence and simplify
use of the method from [5] are provided. The method is applicable to the broad class of single and three phase power electronics equipment like active power filters, uninterrupted power
systems (UPS), active front end converters in drives etc. No
modifications are required for the method to be used in synchronous or stationary reference frame.
A three-phase regenerative front-end voltage source converter
was used for the simulation to verify the effectives of the developed adaptive selective harmonic elimination (ASHE) algorithm. The effectiveness was investigated by simulation to eliminate the fifth and seventh harmonics in line currents. The harmonics in the current were created by dead time and distortion
of utility voltage.
II. SINGLE FREQUENCY ADAPTIVE SELECTIVE
HARMONIC ELIMINATION FILTER
The task of eliminating an undesirable harmonic component
from a signal in DSP can be done by the ASHE algorithm or
filter. The filter, shown in Fig. 1, consists of a combiner, a least
mean square (LMS) adaptation algorithm, and a summing point.
It operates in the following way [6].
a) The reference signal with two orthogonal components cosine and sine ( and ) is sampled. It has the frequency
2
. The frequency
2
should be eliminated from primary input signal . is a sampling period
and is a discrete time index.
b) The reference input (vector with
and
components)
is multiplied by corresponding weights ( and ). The

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Fig. 1. Structure of a single frequency adaptive selective harmonic elimination/

canceling filter.

Fig. 3. Integration of ASHE and regular plant control.

Fig. 2. Block diagram of LMS algorithm (5).

weighted sine and cosine components of reference signal

are combined/added together to match amplitude and
phase angle of interfering sinusoid in the primary input
. Adaptation process adjusts weights to exactly match
amplitude and phase of the interference [6].
c) The signal , created by a combiner, is subtracted from
the primary input (signal to be filtered) and eliminated
in Fig. 1 has
from the output of the filter . Signal
a dual meaning: a) it is the output of the filter, and at
the same time it is also b) an error signal for adaptation
process because it contains harmonic-error component to
be eliminated.
The LMS adaptation algorithm as developed in [6] will be
briefly reviewed. The error estimate follows from Fig. 1
(1)
The reference and weight vectors are defined as
(2)
(3)
If
is used as an estimate of
then in each iteration
step the gradient
can be estimated as
(4)
With an estimated gradient as in (3), the steepest-decent type of
algorithms can be used for weight adaptation
(5)
where is the adaptation gain constant, it regulates speed and
stability of adaptation. Without averaging, by using as an esti, the gradient estimate (4) contains a substanmate of

tial amount of noise which is attenuated by the adaptive process

(5). To quantify noise attenuation (5) can be viewed as discrete
as an input.
implementation of the integrator with product
The salient features of the LMS algorithm (5) with block diagram in Fig. 2 are its elegance, efficiency, and simplicity.
III. INTEGRATION OF ASHE FILTER INTO PLANT CONTROL
To integrate/combine ASHE with existing control of the plant
the following assumptions are made.
a) The adaptation process of ASHE is slow. Therefore, the
ASHE does not interfere with dynamics and does not alter
the transfer function of the plant and associated control.
The signal generated by the ASHE and injected into the
plant from the regular plant control looks like disturbance.
b) The harmonic component to be eliminated by the ASHE
has a high frequency highly above the bandwidth of regular control.
The consequence of the above assumptions is that there are
no interactions between regular control and ASHE. Therefore,
both ASHE and plant control can be analyzed separately.
The ASHE algorithm combined with plant control is shown
in Fig. 3. The configuration in Fig. 3 differs from Fig. 1, and
primary input
(6)
consists of the control input
created by regular plant conwith known fretrol and harmonic distortion component
quency. The plant output is connected to the error input
of the ASHE. The objective is to eliminate undesired harmonic
. The
component from plant output which is created by
elimination is accomplished when output of the ASHE multiplied with an inverse transfer function of the plant matches the
.
harmonic component in the signal
in regular control
It is important to note that reference
should not have harmonic component content . Such a component can be created in the case of cascaded control by the
outer control loop whose output is reference input into inner
control . In this case, the separation principle between regular

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225

and harmonic control will be violated. The harmonic controller

in inner loop will work to eliminate harmonic component generated by controller in outer loop, which will evidently be needed
for achieving objective of outer control loop.
A. Incorporation of Inverse Transfer Function of the Plant in
ASHE
The property that gains
and
changes much more slowly
then the variables in the system is intrinsic to the adaptive algoand
can
rithms [7]. The rate of change/adaptation of gains
be made arbitrarily slow by choosing an adaptation gain that
is sufficiently small. In practical terms, it means that the adaptive gain should be selected low to take five or more periods
and
to reach the
of harmonic component for the gains
final value. One of the results of slow adaptation is attenuation
to propagate
of high frequency components from the input
to the output of the LMS algorithm (5).
and
In the first approximation, the slowly changing gains
can be assumed to be constants. With this assumption, the
plant transfer function in output signal from ASHE

Fig. 4. ASHE with incorporated inverse transfer function of the plant ^

R^ + sL^ .

(7)
acts as a linear operator on sine and cosine inputs into the comcan be implemented as linear combinabiner. Therefore,
tion of sine and cosine functions from reference input. Thus,
the need for the direct implementation of the dynamic inverse
is avoided.
model of the plant
The example of a resistanceinductance ( ) plant with inwill be used to
verse transfer function estimate
illustrate the process. For an
plant the output of the ASHE
is

(8)
or linear combination of sine and cosine functions from the refallows the term with resiserence input. Note that
tance to be neglected. Also, there is no need for explicit knowledge of the inductance, the LMS algorithm will incorporate it in
the weights through adaptation process namely
(9)
The block diagram of ASHE derived based on the above assumptions with incorporated inverse transfer function of the
plant is shown in Fig. 4. Note a change in polarity at the sumand
multiply sine and cosine
ming point. Also, weights
inputs, respectively (opposite than in the original combiner in
Fig. 1). For this particular case, the complexity of the structure of combiner plant inverse did not increase and is comparable with complexity of combiner only. Using (7) and procedure as described any other plant transfer function can be easily
integrated with combiner and only knowledge about plant (or
transfer function) type, not plant parameters is required.

Fig. 5. Elimination of fifth and seventh harmonics from the controlled plant
(single phase) output ( ) by multiple frequency ASHE block (MF ASHE).

B. Selective Elimination of Multiple Harmonics

Selective elimination of multiple harmonics is illustrated in
Fig. 5. The fifth and seventh harmonics are eliminated from the
output variable of the plant . The expansion to eliminate the
other harmonic components can be done by adding blocks like
fifth and seventh. Additional blocks will have the same error
input , frequency of the reference signal will be equal to the
harmonic component to be eliminated and the output will be
added to the outputs of the previous blocks (5 and 7).
Using the block 1, which contains ASHE from Fig. 1, the
. This step,
first harmonic is taken out of the primary input
although not necessary, considerably reduces noise in gradient
estimation in blocks 5 and 7 (for elimination of fifth and seventh
harmonics) and makes adaptation process faster. The output of
the block 1, with filtered out first harmonic and with fifth and
seventh harmonic components still present, is introduced to the
inputs of the blocks 5 and 7. Those blocks have ASHE
error

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 22, NO. 1, JANUARY 2007

Fig. 6. Integration of two ASHE blocks from Fig. 5 in the control of regenerative converter for selective elimination of fifth and seventh harmonics.

with built in inverse transfer functions of the plant. In the case

plant these blocks will look like the one in Fig. 4.
of the
IV. APPLICATION EXAMPLE ON A THREE-PHASE
REGENERATIVE CONVERTER
The application of ASHE in the regenerative front-end
voltage source converter as a representative of three-phase
equipment is illustrated in Fig. 6. The converter had PI controller U reg for dc bus voltage control and two PI regulators,
Iq reg and Id reg implemented in synchronous reference frame
for current control. Reference angle for generation of sine and
cosine functions with frequency of fundamental component
and frequencies of fifth and seventh harmonics is created by a
phase look loop (PLL) block. Sine and cosine components with
fundamental frequency are phase locked with utility voltage
and are used for stationary to synchronous (and vice versa)
reference frames transformations. Sine and cosine components
with five and seven times higher frequencies are used for
from
selective harmonic elimination. Sampled currents
the stationary (a,b,c) reference frame were transformed into
stationary reference frame
(block 3/2) and
two phase
then into synchronous reference frame
(block s/e).
The conventional part of control works as follows: voltage
regulator U reg depending on dc bus voltage error creates an
active current reference . For unity power factor reactive current reference is kept at zero. PI current regulators maintain
and
equal to the
an average value of feedback currents
average values of corresponding references. Outputs of current
regulators are transformed first from synchronous to stationary
reference frame (block e/s) and then from two-phase ( ) to
three-phase (a,b,c) system and written into PWM to control converter insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) bridge. Due to the
limited bandwidth, PI regulators are not able to suppress high
frequency components from current feedback.
To eliminate harmonic components from three phase-load
currents, a similar approach to the single-phase generic solution in Fig. 5 was adopted. The elimination was done in the starather then the three-phase a,b,c system.
tionary two-phase
Two separate MF ASHE ware added around existing current

Fig. 7. Waveforms of input-line currents of (a) a regenerative converter and (b)

spectrum of current Ia showing fifth, seventh, 11th, and 13th harmonic components.

control loops, gray block in Fig. 6. Currents and were introduced into associated MF ASHE blocks, each with a diagram as
in Fig. 5. The outputs MF ASHEs were added (with minus polarity) to the transformed signals from PI regulators. Summed
signals were after 2/3 transformations introduced into PWM.
The components contributed to PWM from ASHE blocks will
create voltage at the output of the inverter with amplitudes and
phase angles as needed to cancel harmonic components from
the load currents.
V. RESULTS OF SIMULATION
To illustrate the effectiveness, the operation of a three-phase
regenerative voltage source converter was simulated with uncompensated dead time without and with ASHE algorithms. The
PWM frequency was 10 kHz and dead time was 4 s. Sampling rate was 5 kHz. The dead time creates current distortion
as shown in Fig. 6 with the most significant fifth and seventh
and smaller 11th and 13th harmonics Fig. 7. Although used for
elimination of harmonics created by dead time, the algorithm

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BLASKO: NOVEL METHOD FOR SELECTIVE HARMONIC ELIMINATION

227

Fig. 9. Coefficients of the adaptive filters w and w for the first, fifth, and
seventh harmonics for current i as a function of time.

adaptation in higher harmonic blocks. Alternatively, without use

of block 1, the noise in weight coefficient can be reduced by further reduction of adaptation gain , however with consequence
of slower convergence.
VI. CONCLUSION

Fig. 8. Improved waveforms (a) of input-line currents and (b) spectrum of line
current Ia after applications of MF ASHE.

will filter out distortion created by any other source (like distortion of input line voltage) with the harmonic components for
which the filter is designed for.
The improved waveforms of line currents after applications
of MF ASHE for elimination of only fifth and seventh components are shown in Fig. 8. Note that practically complete elimination of fifth and seventh harmonics. The 11th and 13th harmonics remained unchanged. For further improvement of waveform and elimination of 11th and 13th harmonics the extension
of MF ASHA filter is a straightforward task and can be deducted
from Fig. 5.
and
Fig. 9 shows coefficients of the adaptive filters
for the first, fifth, and seventh harmonics for current as a function of time. Note fast convergence, the coefficients reached the
final value practically after 0.1 s. Note that for the (heuristically)
selected adaptation gain the noise from harmonic weight
coefficients (Wc5, Ws5, Wc7, and Ws7) was substantially reduced when the weights of fundamental components (Wc1 and
Ws1) reached final value. After that, fundamental component
was reconstructed and removed from input/error signal used
in further adaptation processes for weights (Wc5, Ws5, Wc7,
and Ws7). It shows usefulness to filter out the fundamental component first and then use only remaining signal as the input for

The disturbances in power electronics equipment are often

periodic and rich in higher harmonics. They have known frequencies and are often above the bandwidth of regulators used to
control fundamental components. Therefore, the regular control can only partially reduce their effects on the distortion of
control variables.
The ASHE method was developed to be used as an addition
to the regular (primary) control for elimination of selected harmonic components from control variables. The ASHE takes as
the input the control variable with undesirable higher harmonic
component. Through an adaptive process it creates harmonic
signal, which is injected into the system in order to the cancel
harmonic component in the control variable. The speed of adaptation of an ASHE algorithm is assumed to be well below the
bandwidth of the primary control and thus it has negligible impact on the dynamics of the primary control loop. Therefore,
both ASHE and plant control can be analyzed separately. Only
knowledge of the frequency of components to be eliminated and
character (not parameters) of the plant are required for the design. The extension of cancellation of single to cancellation of
multiple higher harmonic components is illustrated in the paper.
The effectiveness of the ASHE was verified by simulation
of a regenerative converter with a distorted current by uncompensated dead time in PWM. The algorithm was able to efficiently eliminate fifth and seventh harmonics form line current.
For the fast convergence it was found useful to filter out fundamental components and use only the remaining signal (higher
harmonic-distorted currents) for adaptation as shown in Fig. 5.
REFERENCES
[1] S.-G. Jeong and M.-H. Woo, DSPBased active power filter with
predictive current control, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 44, no. 3,
pp. 329336, Jun. 1997.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 22, NO. 1, JANUARY 2007

[2] P. Mattavelli, A closed-loop selective harmonic compensations for active filters, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 8189, Jan./Feb.
2001.
[3] M. J. Newman and D. G. Holmes, Delta operator digital filters for high
performance inverter applications, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol.
18, no. 1, pp. 447454, Jan. 2003.
[4] X. Yuan, W. Merk, H. Stemmler, and J. Allmeling, Stationary frame
generalized integrators for current control of active power filters with
zero steady-state error for current harmonics of concern under unbalanced and distorted conditions, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 38, no. 2,
pp. 523532, Mar./Apr. 2002.
[5] V. Blasko, Adaptive filtering for selective elimination of higher harmonics from line currents of a voltage source converter, in Proc. IEEE
Ind. Appl. Society Annu. Meeting, St. Louis, MO, Oct. 1215, 1998, pp.
12221228.
[6] B. Widrow and S. D. Stearns, Adaptive Signal Processing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985.
[7] K. J. strm and B. Wittenmark, Adaptive Control, 2nd ed. Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley Publ. Co., 1995.

Vladimir Blasko (M89SM97) received the B.Sc.,

M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, in 1976, 1982, and 1986, respectively,
all in electrical engineering.
From 1976 to 1988, he was with the Electrotech-nical Institute of Koncar Company, Zagreb,
in the Power Electronics and Automatic Control
Department. From 1989 to 1992, he was with the
Research and Development Center of Otis Elevator
Company, Farmington, CT. From 1992 to 2000, he
worked for Rockwell Automation Allen Bradley
Company, Mequon, WI. Currently, he is with the Drives and Motion Department of Otis Elevator Company Farmington, CT. During the academic year
19881989, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin
(UW), Madison. His primary areas of interest are modern ac drives, power
electronics, intelligent power management, and applied modern control theory
and technology.

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