2010 9th IEEE/IAS International Conference on Industry Applications

- INDUSCON 2010 -

Modeling and Control Design of the Six-Phase

Interleaved Double Dual Boost Converter
F. S. Garcia*; J. A. Pomilio*; G. Spiazzi**
*University of Campinas; **University of Padova
fsgarcia@gmail.com; antenor@dsce.fee.unicamp.br; spiazzi@dei.unipd.it
Abstract-This paper presents the small-signal modeling and the
control design of the six-phase Interleaved Double Dual Boost,
which is a non-insulated, step-up DC-DC converter that can be
operated with high voltage gain and can be scaled to high-power
applications. The applications of this converter include electrical
vehicles and renewable energy conversion. Experimental results
obtained with a prototype operating with input voltage of 60V
and output voltage of 360V and with nominal output power of
2.2kW are presented.

INTRODUCTION
The growing use of renewable energy sources brings new
challenges to the energy conversion technology. One of these
challenges is related to the fact that some devices that store or
produce electrical energy (e.g. batteries, ultracapacitors, fuel
cells, and solar panels) are built using low voltage cells,
usually connected in series in order to attain a reasonable
voltage. The connection of a large number of cells in series
increases the complexity of the system and may reduce its
performance, because of the differences among cells (e.g.
fabrication variations) and the different working conditions
(e.g. temperature). In addition, those sources of electrical
energy have a significant variation in the output voltage
depending on several factors as, for example, state of charge
and solar radiation.
In typical applications, such as driving electrical motors
and connection with the grid, it is usually necessary or
convenient to use a relatively high and stable voltage. When
this is the case, a step-up converter can be used to boost the
sources voltage to the level required by the application and
to produce a stable output voltage despite variations on the
sources voltage.
As an example of application, consider the power
electronics in the Toyota Prius, described in [1]. According to
this reference, the nominal battery voltage is 206.1 V and the
inverter dc-link has a maximum voltage of 500 V. In order to
step-up the battery voltage, Toyota used a classical boost
converter.
This paper explores a topology proposed with the objective
of creating a higher voltage gain in comparison with the
classical boost converter, the Interleaved Double Dual Boost
[2][3][4].
This topology was chosen among others that also have high
gain properties [5][6] because of the possibility of phase
interleaving that allows the converter to be scaled to highpower applications. Another interesting property is that the
components of the converter can be sized to a voltage lower
than the output voltage.

978-1-4244-8010-4/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

ANALYSIS OF THE CONVERTER

The six-phase Interleaved Double Dual Boost is shown in
Fig. 1, where is the input voltage and the resistor
represents the load. The resistors represent the
resistance of the inductor and of the switches. This version of
the converter where every switch is implemented with a
transistor and a diode allows bidirectional power flow.
Each of the six phases of the converter is composed by one
inductor and its corresponding pair of switches. The phase 1
is comprised by the inductor and switches and
. By analogy, the phases 2 to 6 as can be understood by
the connection presented in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1: Six-phase Interleaved Double Dual Boost

Phases 1, 2 and 3 are connected to the capacitor and this

combination is here called module 1. Phases 4, 5 and 6 are
connected to the capacitor and this combination is here
called module 2.
The output voltage (i.e. the voltage at the load ) is given
by

(1)

The input current in the converter (i.e. the current at the

source ) is given by

(2)

Where is the output current of the converter.

Using (1), neglecting all the losses in the converter, and
supposing that the duty cycle is the same for every phase, it
can be shown that the static gain of the converter is expressed
by

(3)

SMALL-SIGNAL MODELING
The six-phase interleaved double dual boost with ideal
switches is shown in Fig. 2.
It is here defined that the duty cycle of the switch  is
referred to the position that connects the inductor in parallel
with the source ( ). Notice that this definition implies that
the duty cycle is related to the conduction of lower transistor
for the switches and to the conduction of the upper
transistor for the switches .

Using the state-space averaging method [7] [8] and using

the notation  , the average system matrix is
given by

( 7)

While the input matrix is given by:

(8)

Now, consider that the components of the converter are

equal, that is

(9)

(10)

(11)

In addition to the symmetry of both modules, the same

voltage reference is going to be used for the voltage of both
capacitors (see next section), resulting in

(12)

The system can now be written as two independent systems

of order four, one for each module, the first of them having
the following state vector

(13)

The system matrix is then given by

Fig. 2: Inverse Dual Double Boost with ideal switches

The state space model of the converter can be written as

(4)

Henceforth, capital letters will be used to represent the

average values of the state variables.
The state vector is defined as

(5)

(6)

(14)

Supposing that the current is the same in the phases of the

module 1,

And the input is defined as

(15)

And that the duty cycle is the same in the phases of the
module 1

(16)

It is also assumed that the similar expressions of (15) and

(16) hold for module 2.
Then the system can be reduced for a per-phase, permodule model of order two, with the following state vector

(17)

In practice, high values of duty cycle are undesirable

because of high current and low efficiency and therefore the
duty cycle was limited to 0.85.
In order to compute the small signal model of the
converter, a nominal equilibrium point that belongs to the set
defined by (20) is selected. This point is shown in Table II
and indicated in Fig. 4.
TABLE II
NOMINAL EQUILIBRIUM POINT

And the following system matrix

0.73

7.86 A

217.9 V

(18)

This reduced order system represents a dynamic model for

the current on one phase and the voltage on one module of the
converter, with the supposition that the other module and
phases are behaving symmetrically. The variable represents
the duty cycle of the phase that is being modeled.
The set of attainable equilibrium points is

(19)

Using and (6), (23), (24) and (19), the set of equilibrium
points can be written as

Using the state-space averaging method [8], the equivalent

linear system near the equilibrium point is given by:

Fig. 4: Equilibrium points the module voltage and current per phase as a
function of , for

(20)

From (1) and (20), a relation between the output voltage

and the input voltage, which takes into account the resistive
losses and therefore is more precise than relation (3), can be
derived

(21)

The converters parameters are presented in table I.

TABLE I
CONVERTERS NOMINAL PARAMETERS

60 V
0.15
535H
470F
59
Based on equations (20) and the parameters of Table I, the
set of attainable equilibrium points of the converter is shown
in Fig. 3.

(22)

Where

(23)

And

(24)

Expression (22) can be simplified to

(25)

And the transfer functions of the linearized system around

the operating point are given by

(26)

This expression can be developed into

(27)

From (27) the transfer function relating the voltage to the

current can be derived,
Fig. 3: Equilibrium points of the module voltage and current per phase as a
function of

(28)

DESIGN OF CONTROL LOOPS

Using the transfer functions of the current to duty cycle,
presented in (27) and of the voltage to current, presented in
(28), the control loops can be designed, using current mode
control [9].
The duty cycle value is determined by the current controller
(internal loop). The average current reference is generated by
the voltage controller.
The control diagram of the control of the voltage in one
module and the current in one phase is shown in Fig. 5.

The current controller is then designed according to the

factor method [10] and the resulting transfer function is

(30)

After designing the current controller, the voltage

controller is designed, using the voltage to current transfer
function (28), whose Bode diagram is shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 5: Per-module, per-phase model

First, the current controller is designed using the current to

duty cycle transfer function of (27), whose Bode diagram is
shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 7: Bode diagram of voltage to current transfer function around the

nominal equilibrium point.

The cut-off frequency of the voltage control loop must be

much smaller than the cut-off frequency of the current control
loop, in order to consider the latter as having unitary gain and
zero phase when designing the former.
The closed loop cut-off frequency and the phase margin of
the voltage control loop are shown in Table IV.
TABLE IV
VOLTAGE CONTROLLER SPECIFICATIONS

Fig. 6: Bode diagram of current to duty cycle transfer function around the
nominal equilibrium point.

The controller that was used as the current controller and

the voltage controller is a proportional integral controller with
a low pass filter, with the transfer function given by

(29)

Where is the proportional gain, is the integral gain,

is the pole angular frequency and is the zero
angular frequency.
In order to calculate the parameters of the current
controller, the closed loop cut-off frequency and the phase
margin are selected, as shown in Table III.
TABLE III
CURRENT CONTROLLER SPECIFICATIONS

Cut-off frequency


Phase margin

Cut-off frequency

The resulting voltage controller is

Phase margin

(31)

The control loops were implemented digitally, based on

digital current mode control [9]. The average current of each
phase is measured by sampling the signal from the current
sensor synchronized with the center of the PWM pulse.
In order to assure the conditions of equal average voltage in
the capacitors (12) and of equal average currents in the phases
of the same module (15), the same voltage reference is used
for both capacitors and the same current reference is uses for
the three phases of the same module as shown in the diagram
of Fig. 8. Six current controllers (one for each phase) and two
voltage controllers (one for each module) were implemented.
The PWM blocks represent the PWM generators of the
microcontroller.

processing the controllers and auxiliary routines (protection,

soft-start etc).
The power switches were implemented using two parts of
the integrated circuit IRAM20UP60A, manufactured by
International Rectifier. Each of this integrated circuit contains
six IGBTs with anti-parallel diodes, in a typical three phase
inverter bridge configuration, along with driving circuits and
a thermistor for thermal protection.
The switching frequency of each phase of the converter
was set at  ( ). The nominal operating point
of the converter is , , ,
. At this point, the efficiency of the converter
was measured as 92.8%.
The waveforms were acquired using a Tektronix DPO 7054
Oscilloscope and plotted with Mathworks MATLAB.
The currents in the six phases are shown in Fig. 10.
Because of the controller action, the current of every phase
have approximately the same average value. The small
variation in the peak-to-peak value and in the slope of the
phases currents are mainly due to differences in the inductors.
Fig. 8: Control diagram of the implemented controllers

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The six-phase Interleaved Double Dual Boost that was
experimentally tested is shown in Fig. 9.

Fig. 10: Experimental waveforms of the currents in the six phases

The ripple is significantly reduced in the input current of

each module because of the proper phase displacement (of
60), as shown in Fig. 11.
Fig. 9: Experimental set-up

The microcontroller is enclosed in the metallic box (A), for

reduction of electromagnetic interference. The signals of the
current and voltage sensors are received by the signal
conditioning board (B) and transmitted to the microcontroller.
The board (C) is an auxiliary power supply for the signal
conditioning board. The microcontroller is programmed via
the emulator BlackHawk USB2000 (D).
All the power circuits of the converter (power
semiconductors, inductors, capacitors, and sensors) are
located in the boards shown in position (E).
The control routines were implemented in a microcontroller
model TMS320F28335, by Texas Instruments. This
microcontroller was chosen because of its natural support for
the generation of the six pairs of PWM signals with the
proper phase and also because of its sufficient capacity for

Fig. 11: Currents of the module 1

The same effect of ripple cancelation can be noticed in the

voltages of each module, which are summed in expression (1)
to produce the output voltage, as shown in Fig. 12.

For the load turn on, the voltage variation (undervoltage)

was of approximately 4% and the settling time (95%) was of
approximately , while for the load turn-off the voltage
variation (overvoltage) was of approximately 8.5% and the
settling time (95%) was of approximately .
CONCLUSIONS
This paper described the derivation of the small signal
model of the six-phase Interleaved Double Dual Boost, which
was used in the design of the controllers. The similarity of the
components and the symmetry of the operation of the
converter were explored in order to reduce the complexity of
the model. Experimental results were provided to justify the
theoretical analysis.
Fig. 12: Voltages measured in the converter

A positive step load change was applied to the converter,

with the load changing from to and the result
is shown in Fig. 13

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors thanks for Simone Buso for contributing to the
digital implementation of the controllers and Edson
Vendrusculo and Jos Claudio Geromel for useful
suggestions.
The authors acknowledge the FAPESP financial
contribution to this research and Texas Instruments for the
donation of the microcontrollers that were used in this
project.
REFERENCES
[1] M. Ehsani, Y. Gao, S. E. Gay, and A. Emadi, Modern Electric, Hybrid
Electric, and Fuel Cell Vehicles, Second Edition. USA: CRC Press,
2008.
[2] B. V. Dang, Y. Lembeye, J. P. Ferrieux, J. Barbarroux, and Y. Avenas,
"New high-power high-ratio non isolated DC-DC boost converter for
fuel cell applications," IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conference,
PESC, 2006.
[3] P. Thounthong, P. Sethakul, and B. Davat, "Modified 4-phase
interleaved fuel cell converter for high-power high-voltage
applications," ICIT, IEEE International Conference on Industrial
Technology, 2009.

Fig. 13: Load changes from 1013 W to 2023 W

The opposite step load change, with the load changing from
to is shown in Fig. 14.

[4] K. Kajangpan and B. Neammenee, "High Gain Interaleave Technique

with Maximum Peak Power Tracking for Wind Turbine Converter,"
ECTI-CON, 6th International Conference on Telecommunications and
Information Technology, 2009.
[5] Y. Jang and M. M. Jovanovi, "Interleaved Boost Converter With
Intrinsic Voltage-Doubler Characteristic for Universal-Line PFC Front
End," Trans. on Power Electronics, vol. 22, no. 4, Jul. 2007.
[6] H. Nomura, K. Fujiwara, and M. Yoshida, "A New DC-DC Converter
Circuit with Larger Step-up/down Ratio," IEEE Power Electronics
Specialists Conference, PESC, 2006.
[7] R. W. Erickson and D. Maksimovic, Fundamentals of Power
Electronics. USA: Springer, 2000.
[8] A. S. Kislovski, R. Redl, and N. O. Sokal, Dynamic Analysis of
Switching Mode DC-DC Converters. New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold, 1991.
[9] S. Buso and P. Matavelli, Digital Control in Power Electronics. USA:
Morgan & Claypool, 2006.
[10] H. D. Venable, "The K factor: A new mathematical tool for stability
analysis and synthesis," Proceedings of Powercon, 1983.

Fig. 14: Load changes from 2023 W to 1013 W