IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 20, NO.

4, JULY 2005

833

Maximum Boost Control of the Z-Source Inverter

Fang Zheng Peng, Fellow, IEEE, Miaosen Shen, Student Member, IEEE, and Zhaoming Qian, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper explores control methods for the Z-source

inverter and their relationships of voltage boost versus modulation index. A maximum boost control is presented to produce the
maximum voltage boost (or voltage gain) under a given modulation index. The control method, relationships of voltage gain versus
modulation index, and voltage stress versus voltage gain are analyzed in detail and verified by simulation and experiment.
Index TermsBoost control, voltage gain, voltage stress,
Z-source inverter.
Fig. 1. Z-Source inverter.

I. INTRODUCTION

ANY pulse-width modulation (PWM) control methods

have been developed and used for the traditional
three-phase voltage-source (V-source) inverter. The traditional
V-source inverter has six active vectors (or switching states)
when the dc voltage is impressed across the load and two zero
vectors when the load terminals are shorted through either
the lower or upper three devices. These total eight switching
states and their combinations have spawn many PWM control
schemes.
The recently presented Z source inverter [1][3] shown in
Fig. 1 has additional zero vectors: shoot-through switching
states that are forbidden in the traditional V-source inverter. For
the traditional V-source inverter, both switches of any phase
leg can never be gated on at the same time or a short circuit
(shoot through) would occur and destroy the inverter. The new
Z-source inverter advantageously utilizes the shoot through
states to boost the dc bus voltage by gating on both upper and
lower switches of a phase leg. Therefore the Z-source inverter
can boost voltage and produce a desired output voltage that
is greater than the available dc bus voltage. In addition, the
reliability of the inverter is greatly improved because the shoot
through due to mis-gating can no longer destroy the circuit.
Thus it provides a low-cost, reliable, and high efficiency single
stage structure for buck and boost power conversion.
In [1], the main circuit of the Z-source inverter and the operation principle have been described in detail. In this paper, we
will examine the relationship of voltage boost and modulation
index, present two control methods to achieve maximum voltage
boost, namely maximum boost control. The voltage boost and
voltage stress on the devices will be investigated. The maximum
boost control method, and its theoretical relationship of voltage
gain versus modulation index will be presented.
Manuscript received May 7, 2004; revised September 20, 2004. Recommended by Associate Editor P. M. Barbosa.
F. Z. Peng and M. Shen are with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 USA (e-mail:
fzpeng@egr.msu.edu).
Z. Qian is with the Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2005.850927

Fig. 2.

Simple boost control waveforms.

II. VOLTAGE BOOST AND STRESS

As described in [1], the voltage gain of the Z-source inverter
can be expressed as
V
V

(1)

where V is the output peak phase voltage,

is the input dc
is the modulation index, and is the boost factor,
voltage,
which is determined by
(2)
where
is the shoot-through time interval over a switching
is the shoot-through duty ratio.
cycle T, or
In [1], a simple boost control method was used to control the
shoot-through duty ratio. Fig. 2 illustrates the simple control
method that employs a straight line equal to or greater than the
peak value of the three phase references to control shoot-through
duty ratio in a traditional sinusoidal PWM. The Z-source inverter maintains the six active states unchanged as the traditional carrier based PWM control. For this simple boost control, the obtainable shoot-through duty ratio decreases with the
increase of . The maximum shoot-through duty ratio of the
, thus reaching zero at
simple boost control is limited to

0885-8993/$20.00 2005 IEEE

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 20, NO. 4, JULY 2005

Fig. 3. Voltage gain of the simple boost control.

a modulation index of one. The thick curve in Fig. 3 shows the

versus , which indimaximum obtainable voltage gain,
1. The shaded
cates no voltage boost and no voltage gain at
area is the possible operation region under the simple control. In
order to produce an output voltage that requires a high voltage
gain, a small modulation index has to be used. However, small
modulation indexes result in greater voltage stress on the devices. Based on (1) and (2), define the voltage gain as
V
V

Fig. 4.

Switch voltage stress versus voltage gain.

(3)

For any desired voltage gain , the maximum modulation index

can be used is
(4)
As analyzed in [1], the voltage stress V across the switches is
BV The voltage stress under this modulation method can be
calculated by
V

BV

Fig. 5. Waveforms of maximum boost control.

(5)

The voltage stress across switches versus the voltage gain is

plotted in Fig. 4. Using this control method, the voltage stress
across the switches is quite high, which will restrict the obtainable voltage gain because of the limitation of device voltage
rating.
III. MAXIMUM BOOST CONTROL
Reducing the voltage stress under a desired voltage gain now
becomes important to the control of Z source inverter. As analyzed above, the voltage gain is defined as MB, and the voltage
, therefore, to minimize the
stress across the switches is
voltage stress for any given voltage gain, we have to minimize
and maximize , with the restriction of that their product
is the desired value. On the other hand, we should maximize
for any given modulation index to achieve the maximum voltage
gain. Consequently, from (2), we have to make the shoot through
duty ratio as large as possible.

Fig. 5 shows the proposed maximum boost control strategy.

It is quite similar to the traditional carrier-based PWM control
method. The point is: this control method maintains the six active states unchanged and turns all zero states into shoot-through
zero states. Thus maximum and are obtained for any given
without distorting the output waveform.
modulation index
As can be seen from Fig. 5, the circuit is in shoot through
state when the triangular carrier wave is either greater than the
maximum curve of the references V V V or smaller than
the minimum of the references. The shoot through duty cycle
varies each cycle. To calculate the voltage gain, what we are
interested in is the average shoot through duty cycle.
.
The shoot through state repeats periodically every
Assume that the switching frequency is much higher than the
modulation frequency, the shoot-through duty ratio over one
can be expressed as
switching cycle in the interval
(6)

PENG et al.: MAXIMUM BOOST CONTROL

Fig. 6. V

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0 5V versus M.

= :

The average duty ratio of shoot-through can be calculated by

integrating (6) which yields

Fig. 7.

Voltage stress versus voltage gain.

(7)
From (7), the boost factor

is obtained
(8)

With this type of control method, the voltage gain can be determined by the modulation index
V

(9)

versus
is shown by the thick
The plot of V
curve in Fig. 6. The shaded area in the figure is the possible
operation region. As can be seen from Fig. 6, the output voltage
, the
increases when decreases. As approaches
output voltage increases to infinite.
Compared to Fig. 3, the possible operation region of this control method is much wider. On the other hand, for any given
voltage gain, a higher modulation index can be used, which
means lower voltage stress across the switches.
From (9) and voltage gain defined in (3), the maximum modulation index that can be used for a given voltage gain is
(10)
Thus, the voltage stress is
(11)
The voltage stress versus the voltage gain is shown in Fig. 7.
Compared with the simple control method, shown in Fig. 4,
the voltage stress in the proposed control method is much lower,
which means that for given devices, the inverter can be operated
to obtain a higher voltage gain.

Fig. 8. Sketch map of third harmonic injection control.

Third harmonic injection is commonly used in a three-phase

inverter system to increase the modulation index range. This can
so as to increase
also be used here to increase the range of
system voltage gain range. The sketch map is shown in Fig. 8.
The operation principle is identical to the previous case, the only
difference is that the modulation waveform is changed. In this
can be
control, the maximum modulation index
third harmonic injection [4].
achieved at
Similar to the previous case, the shoot through duty cycle
repeats every
. We can also get the voltage gain through
under this control
studying the behavior during
method. The shoot-through duty ratio in this period is described
in (12) shown at the bottom of the next page. From the above
calculation, the average shoot-through duty ratio is (13) shown
at the bottom of the next page. Therefore, we have
(14)
V

(15)

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Fig. 9. V

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 20, NO. 4, JULY 2005

Fig. 11.

System configuration in simulation and experiment.

Fig. 12.

Simulation results with M =0.88 and input voltage 170 V dc.

0 5V versus M .

= :

Fig. 10. Voltage stress of switches versus voltage gain of proposed control
methods.

given voltage gain except that the range of voltage gain is extended in the third harmonic injection method. The relationship
of voltage stress versus voltage gain is shown in Fig. 10.
IV. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The voltage gain is identical to the maximum control method

for the same modulation index. The curve of voltage gain versus
modulation index is shown in Fig. 9, from which we can see that
the possible operation region is extended with the increase of
modulation index. From (9) and (15), the two control methods
have identical voltage gainmodulation index relationship.
Therefore they should share the same voltage stress for any

To demonstrate the validity of the control strategies, simulation and experiments were conducted with the configuration
shown in Fig. 11 with the following parameters: Z-source
network:
1 mH,
1.3 mF, switching
frequency: 10 kHz. The purpose of the system is to compare
the performance of the Z-source inverter under different input
voltage and similar output three-phase voltage of around

(12)

(13)

PENG et al.: MAXIMUM BOOST CONTROL

Fig. 13.

Simulation results with

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M =1 and input voltage 220 V dc.

Fig. 15.

Fig. 14. Simulation results with

input voltage 250 V dc.

Experimental result at

M =0.88 and input voltage 170 V dc.

M =1.1 with third harmonic injection and

TABLE I
THEORETICAL VOLTAGE STRESS AND OUTPUT VOLTAGE
UNDER DIFFERENT CONDITIONS

205-V rms. The simulation results when the input voltages are
170 V, 220 V, and 250 V are shown in Figs. 1214, respectively.
The corresponding modulation index are
0.88
1,
and
1.1 with third harmonic injection respectively. In the
simulation results, V is the input voltage, V is the dc bus
voltage, which is also the voltage stress V , and V
is the
output line to line voltage after the filter. Based on the analysis
above, the theoretical voltage stress and output line to line rms
voltage are listed in Table I.

Fig. 16. Experimental result at

M =1 and input voltage 220 V dc.

The simulation results in Figs. 1214 are quite consistent with

the theoretical analysis, which verifies the above analysis and
the control concept.
Experiments with the same operation conditions and system
configuration as in the simulation were conducted. The results
are shown in Figs. 1517, where V is the input voltage, V is
the voltage stress,
is the current through the inductor in the
is the output voltage after the filter.
Z-source network, and V
The figures show that the output voltage is kept nearly constant
regardless of the wide varying range of the input voltage and the
output voltage agrees with the analysis and simulation results
very well. A lower input voltage requires a greater boost factor
B, and smaller modulation index. Because the output voltage
is nearly constant, the lower modulation index yields higher

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 20, NO. 4, JULY 2005

Fig. 17. Experimental result at

input voltage 250 V dc.

M =1.1 with third harmonic injection and

voltage stress, V . This can also be observed from the experimental results. Based on these results, the validity of the control
methods has been proven.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper presented two control methods to obtain maximum voltage gain of the Z-source inverter. The method maximizes the shoot through period without effecting the active
states by turning all zero states into the shoot through zero state,
thus maximum output voltage can be obtained for a given modulation index. In turn, maximum modulation index can be used to
obtain any desired output voltage, thus, minimizing the voltage
stress across the switches. Third harmonic injection can also be
used to extend the modulation index range. The relationship of
the voltage gain versus modulation index was analyzed, and the
relationship between minimum voltage stress of the switches
and voltage gain was given. Simulation and experiments were
conducted to verify the control methods and analysis.
REFERENCES
[1] F. Z. Peng, Z-source inverter, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 39, no.
2, pp. 504510, Mar./Apr. 2003.
[2]
, Z-source inverter, in Proc. IEEE Industry Applications Conf.,
Pittsburgh, PA, 2002, pp. 775781.
[3] F. Z. Peng, X. Yuan, X. Fang, and Z. Qian, Z-source inverter for adjustable speed drives, IEEE Power Electron. Lett., vol. 1, no. 2, pp.
3335, Jun. 2003.
[4] D. A. Grant and J. A. Houldsworth, PWM AC motor drive employing
ultrasonic carrier, in Proc. IEE PE-VSD Conf., London, UK, 1984, pp.
234240.

Fang Zheng Peng (M92SM96F05) received

the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from
Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, in 1983 and the
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from Nagaoka University of Technology, Nagaoka
Niigata, Japan, in 1987 and 1990, respectively.
He was with Toyo Electric Manufacturing Company, Ltd., from 1990 to 1992, as a Research Scientist, was engaged in research and development of
active power filters, flexible ac transmission systems
(FACTS) applications and motor drives. From 1992
to 1994, he was with the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, as a Research Assistant Professor (where he initiated a multilevel inverter program for
FACTS applications and a speed-sensorless vector control project). From 1994
to 2000, he worked for Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), as a Research
Assistant Professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, from 1994 to 1997,
and was a Staff Member, Lead (principal) Scientist, Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Research Center, ORNL, from 1997 to 2000. Since 2000, he has
been with Michigan State University, East Lansing, as an Associate Professor
of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He holds over ten
patents.
Dr. Peng received the 1996 First Prize Paper Award and the 1995 Second
Prize Paper Award of Industrial Power Converter Committee in IEEE/IAS Annual Meeting, the 1996 Advanced Technology Award of the Inventors Clubs
of America, Inc., the International Hall of Fame, the 1991 First Prize Paper
Award in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, the 1990 Best
Paper Award in the Transactions of the IEE of Japan (the Promotion Award of
Electrical Academy). He was Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
POWER ELECTRONICS from 1997 to 2001 and has been Chair of the Technical
Committee for Rectifiers and Inverters, IEEE Power Electronics Society, since
2001.

Miaosen Shen (S04) was born in Zhejiang, China,

in 1978. He received the B.S. and M.S. degree from
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2000 and
2003, respectively, and is currently pursuing the
Ph.D. degree at Michigan State University, East
Lansing.
His research interests include power factor correction techniques, electronic ballast, and motor drives.

Zhaoming Qian (SM92) received the M.S. degree

in radio engineering from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou,
China, in 1961, and the Ph.D. degree in applied
science from the Catholic University of Leuven and
the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (IMEC),
Leuven, Belgium, in 1989.
Since 1961, he has been teaching and conducting
research on electronics and power electronics at Zhejiang University, where he became a Professor in the
Department of Electrical Engineering in 1992. He is
currently the Deputy Director of the National Engineering Research Center for
Applied Power Electronics and the Deputy Director of the Scientific Committee
of the National Key Laboratory of Power Electronics, Zhejiang University. His
main professional interests include power electronics and industrial applications, EMC in power electronic systems, and system integration in power electronics. He has authored one book on EMC design and more than 250 papers.
Dr. Qian received Excellent Education Awards from the China Education
Commission and from Zhejiang University in 1993, 1997, and 1999, Science
and Technology Progress Awards from the China Education Commission in
1999 and 2003, and Excellent Paper Awards. He has served as a Vice-Chairman
of the IEEE PELS Beijing Chapter since 1995.