Advanced Power Electronics

Evaluation of Space Vector Method with input power factor correction for Indirect Matrix Converter
Narwal Ajit S., Graduate Student, NC State University Abstract: This work includes design and analysis of a two-stage matrix converter called the indirectmatrix converter or IMC. The motivation behind the endeavor is to perform space-vector modulation, or SVM, and achieve desired input power factor and sinusoidal output voltages. phase to three-phase converter. The IMC consists of an input LCR-filter stage, a rectifier stage sans a DC-link capacitor, and an inverter stage. The space vector modulation (SVM) technique is derived from [3]. The deliverables of the work is to execute the SVM method and obtain both sinusoidal input currents and output voltages at a desired voltage transfer ratio, Av, and an output frequency, fo. The supply side line-to-line voltage is 208 V RMS at 60 Hz line frequency. The load is a passive RL load with R and L equal to 5 Ohm and 2.5 mH respectively. The switching frequency is 40 kHz. The work involves study of harmonic content of the supply current, load voltage and load current; additionally a study of the harmonic content of the variables with respect to the change in the converter modulation index and switch stresses followed by harmonic study with variation in desired load frequency.

Matrix converters are type of three-phase to threephase converters which are advantageous over traditional rectifier-inverter type power frequency converters. Apart from providing sinusoidal input and output waveforms, with minimal higher order harmonics and no sub-harmonics they have inherent bi-directional energy flow capability; the input power factor can be controlled plus matrix converters have minimal energy storage requirements, which allows riddance from bulky energy-storage capacitors. However, there is a flip side to performance of this class of converters; firstly the maximum input-output voltage transfer ratio is limited to 87 % for sinusoidal input and output waveforms. The requirement for semiconductor devices goes up as well in comparison with a conventional AC-AC indirect power frequency converter, since no monolithic bidirectional switches exist and consequently discrete unidirectional devices, variously arranged, have to be used for each bi-directional switch. Additionally, these systems are particularly sensitive to the disturbances in the input voltage system [1], [2]. The present problem involves study of an indirectmatrix converter (IMC), which is one of the several topologies that can be implemented for a three-

Fig. 1 depicts the system to be implemented which consists of 12 switches out of which the rectifier side (voltage-source rectifier or VSR) has fourquadrant switches which both block voltages of

both polarities and allows current flow in both directions as needed. The four quadrant switches were implemented as depicted in Fig. 2.

Where L is the load power factor at the output frequency fo. Using switching equations from [3] it can be shown that

And

Fig. 2 The diode-bridge bi-directional switch configuration

Though several other configurations are available for implementing a four-quadrant switch the configuration offers a particular advantage that it uses only one IGBT and hence one gate-driver circuit. The main disadvantage, however, is that at any point of time there are three devices which conduct giving rise to high conduction losses. Let the input phase voltage is given by

Where the subscript T denotes a transpose and the matrix TphL is the instantaneous input-phase to output line-to-line transfer function of the 3-3 MC. The only constraint on the switching is that voltage sources cannot be shorted at any time the current sources (read load-inductances) never be open-circuited during operation of converter. This translates into the and can the

And

and the desired local-averaged output line-to-line voltage is

The switch states correspond to Fig. 3

because of inductive balanced load the load current is assumed to be sinusoidal and are given by

Fig. 3 Simplified 3-3 MC topology

The ITF approach taken in this work defines the transfer function of the MC as the resultant of the VSR (voltage source rectifier), stage one, and VSI (voltage source inverter), stage two transfer functions. This can be written as:

frames and determining the position sector of the vector and also the position angle both of which are used to get duty cycles for the desired response.

Where TVSI and TVSR is given by

And

Respectively, Vdc is the virtual DC-bus voltage at the output of the VSR stage and Idc is the corresponding current. The approach can be better visualized using Fig. 4
Fig. 5 3-3 MC: a) Rectifier hexagon; b) Inverter hexagon

This gives

Fig. 4 Adopted approach of VSR-VSI conversion

SVM is carried out for both the input current references and output voltage references lending us the vital duty cycles which govern the switching of the respective gating pulses for both the inverter and the rectifier. The method to obtain the duty cycles is pretty straight forward and involves observation of the space vector of the waveforms in stationary d-q

Where d, d, d, and d are respective pairs of duty cycles for VSI and VSR each. For first sector for example in VSI d is the fraction of time spent on vector V6 and d on V1. Consider the case when both vectors are in their first quadrant of the respective hexagons. For a lineto-line voltage output VAB the switching time is divided into five sections wherein for a particular position of a VSR vector the VSI vector spends time on both vectors I6 and I1 yielding the sequence

in table 1. This ensures that at all the times the switching of both VSI and VSR stages are synchronized and any energy coming out of the first stage is transferred onto the output stage which is an imperative given that there is no energy storage element in the circuit.

The point to be noted is that though reference [5] was consulted for implementing most efficient method of switching however the approach was abandoned owing to the applicability of the aforesaid paper to a nine-switch model instead of the desired twelve-switch one. Simulations

Table 1. Switching sequence example

Fig. 6 displays the sequence for the example switching.

Fig. 7 Overall implementation circuit

Fig. 6 Synthesis of 3-3 MC output line-to-line voltages for i is the input power factor=0o

The sequence of switching is chosen as I6-V6, I6-V1, I1-V1, I1-V6, and I0-V0 which ensures that minimum switching takes place. Both VSI and VSR were switched with a non-symmetric switching time distribution method [4].
Fig. 8 Inverter gating implementation circuit

Simulations were executed on SIMULINK and the results are summarized in the next section. Results

A)

Assuming reference input-output voltage transfer ration to be 0.8 and reference output frequency, fo, the plots waveforms for supply voltage vsa and current isa, output voltage VAB, output current iA, spectrum of isa, VAB, and spectrum of iA are obtained as under.
Fig. 11 Spectrum for input phase current, isa (A)

Fig. 12 Spectrum for output line-line voltage, vAB (V) Fig. 9 Supply voltage vsa (V) and input current isa (A)

Fig. 13 Spectrum for output phase current, iA (A)

B) Assuming a constant output frequency of 50 Hz

the MC voltage gain, Av was varied from 0.05 to 0.85 in steps of 0.1. The recorded THD% values were obtained and plotted as under for supply current isa, output current iA, and output line-line voltage VAB.

Fig. 10 Output line-line voltage vAB (V) and output phase current iA (A)

Table 2 covers the readings obtained.

THD (%) iA 27.94 9.1 5.77 4.49 3.65 3.19 2.82 2.8 2.77

Av (Voltage gain)

0.05 0.15 0.25 0.35 0.45 0.55 0.65 0.75 0.85

isa 122.2 91.77 64.28 40.86 28.95 21.49 16.89 12.66 10.02

vAB 418.29 271.91 164.06 162.36 135.44 114.9 97.82 83.65 71.11

The maximum voltage across a VSI switch was obtained to be 360.4 C and a peak current of 22 A corresponding to a voltage gain of 0.85; at the same gain, for VSR, the maximum voltage and current was 394 V and 22.5 A. The observed values were expected since as the voltage gain increases the switches have to handle more energy. These values can be assigned to define the safe-operating area (or SoA) for both VSI and VSR respectively. Simulations were obtained for a fixed converter gain, Av=0.8, and a variable output supply frequency. The recorded THD% values were obtained and plotted as under for supply current isa, output current iA, and output line-line voltage VAB.
THD (%)
Output frequency (Hz)

C)

Table 2. THD (%) variation with converter voltage gain; fixed output frequency=50 Hz

5 20 35 50 65 80 95 110 125

isa 10.17 11.3 9.49 11.32 8.83 9.24 8.18 10.26 7.08

iA 2.92 2.99 2.68 2.74 2.81 3.13 2.81 2.81 3.2

vAB 85.71 85.84 70.36 77.54 50 85.67 75.05 52.16 82.6

Table 3. THD (%) variation with converter output frequency; fixed converter voltage gain =0.8

Fig. 14 THD (%) variation with converter voltage gain; fixed output frequency=50 Hz

As observed from the plot it can be inferred that the total harmonic distortion progressively reduces until the gain remains less than one. The trend is favorable since most MCs are used for loads where THD of load current is of more concern than output voltage. Another observation made during the simulation stages was that the THD for the input and output currents increases in case of over-modulation, Av>1.0, with the same over-modulation the THD for line-line output voltage decreases.
Fig. 15 THD (%) variation with converter output frequency; fixed converter voltage gain =0.8

Input and output current THD percentage values remain consistent throughout the frequency variation; however, the THD value for the output line-line voltage shows a dip when the output frequency comes around the supply frequency. References
[1] P. Tenti, L. Malesani, L. Rossetto, Optimum Control of N-Input K-Output Matrix Converters, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 707-713, October 1992. [2] A. Alesina, M. Venturini, Analysis and Design of Optimum-Amplitude Nine-Switch Direct AC-AC Converters, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 101-112, January 1989. [3] Huber, L.; Borojevic, D.; "Space vector modulated threephase to three-phase matrix converter with input power factor correction," Industry Applications, IEEE Transactions on , vol.31, no.6, pp.1234-1246, Nov/Dec 1995. [4] Bhattacharya S., ECE 792, Advanced power electronics Course notes. [5] Nielsen, P.; Blaabjerg, F.; Pedersen, J.K.; "Space vector modulated matrix converter with minimized number of switchings and a feedforward compensation of input voltage unbalance," Power Electronics, Drives and Energy Systems for Industrial Growth, 1996., Proceedings of the 1996 International Conference on , vol.2, no., pp.833-839 vol.2, 811 Jan 1996.