IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO.

2, MARCH 2008 543

Analytical Modelling of Voltage Balance Dynamics

for a Flying Capacitor Multilevel Converter
Brendan Peter McGrath, Member, IEEE, and Donald Grahame Holmes, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper presents a strategy for the analytic deter-

mination of the natural voltage balancing dynamics of flying ca-
pacitor converters. The approach substitutes Double Fourier series
representations of the pulsewidth modulation (PWM) switching
signals into a nonlinear dynamic circuit model of the converter.
The result reduces to a linearized state-space model that can be
readily solved, with the Fourier solution coefficients defining the
state-space matrix terms. The solution can be readily developed for
converters of any level, and allows rapid analytical investigation of
the dynamic (and static) balancing behavior over a wide range of
conditions. Furthermore, the approach allows powerful strategies
such as root locus to be used to investigate the converter’s perfor-
mance as a function of changes in parameters such as modulation
index and load. The analysis approach has been fully verified by
comparing it against experimental results on a low voltage proto-
type converter.
Index Terms—Double Fourier, dynamic model, flying capacitor,
multilevel converter, natural balance, pulsewidth modulation
(PWM), root locus.

I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. Topology of an N-level phase leg of a flying capacitor converter.
ULTILEVEL converters offer significant advantages
M for high-power applications by using series-connected
semiconductor devices to operate at higher voltages than
the rating of a single device, while also producing switched
waveforms with a lower harmonic content than their two-level
counterparts [1], [2]. Of the various multilevel converter
topologies that have been proposed, the multicell or flying
capacitor topology (Fig. 1) is emerging as a particularly at-
tractive solution [3]–[14] because it is transformerless and has
redundant phase leg states that allow the switching stresses
to be equally distributed between the semiconductor switches
[3]–[5]. However, the switch blocking voltages must still be
kept below the switch ratings, which, for the N-level con-
verter illustrated in Fig. 1, requires a target device blocking
voltage of . This in turn requires that the th
floating capacitor is charged to a voltage of ,
for . It is known that this voltage profile
evolves naturally when the cell switches ( to ) are
controlled with interleaved pulses of (approximately) equal
duty cycle, phase shifted by [5]–[9], as is typically
Fig. 2. Phase-shifted carrier (PSC) PWM for a five-level multicell converter.
achieved using a modulation strategy such as phase-shifted car-
rier pulsewidth modulation (PSCPWM) (Fig. 2). This voltage
balance process is commonly referred to as natural balancing
Manuscript received July 16, 2007; revised September 24, 2007. This work
was supported by the Australian Research Council for funding this research
[5]–[8].
under project DP0666130 and project DP0666176. Recommended for publica- The static characteristics of the capacitor natural voltage bal-
tion by Associate Editor W. Bin. ancing processes are well documented [5]–[8], but their dy-
The authors are with the Department of ECSE, Monash University, namic response to dc bus variations can vary significantly de-
Clayton, Vic., Australia 3800 (e-mail: brendan.mcgrath@eng.monash.edu.au;
brendan_mcgrath@ieee.org; grahame.holmes@eng.monash.edu.au). pending on parameters such as loading state, the modulation
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2007.915175 pulse ratio, filter design, etc. For a complete design process, it
0885-8993/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
544 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 2, MARCH 2008

Equations (1) and (2)1 define an instantaneous transient cir-

Fig. 3. Converter configuration considering the k th floating capacitor only.
cuit model of the converter, where and are system in-
puts, and and are system state variables. The model
is similar to previously reported models [7]–[9], and is immedi-
ately identifiable as nonlinear because the system state variables
are multiplied by the system inputs. The conventional approach
to analyze such a system is to average the switching functions
, but this forces the derivative terms in (1) to zero and
hence eliminates all dynamic response characteristics. The al-
ternative approach presented in this paper uses Fourier series
equivalent [15], [16] substitutions for the switching functions to
retain the derivative terms in (1).

III. FOURIER REPRESENTATION OF THE SWITCHING FUNCTIONS

is important to quantify these dynamics throughout the intended It is well known [15], [16] that a complete harmonic repre-
operating range of the converter, and typically this is done using sentation of the switched output of a sine-triangle PWM process
detailed switched simulations. However, such studies provide requires a Double Fourier series, so that becomes
limited insight into the sensitivity of the balancing process to
operating condition changes. Analytic methods are an attractive
alternative, but the approaches reported to date are hard to inter-
pret and difficult to use [5]–[8].
This paper presents a generalized analytical modeling (3)
strategy that fully quantifies the dynamics of the natural capac-
itor voltage balancing process for any operating condition. The
where and and are the carrier and reference
strategy recognizes that it is the load current harmonics that
frequencies and phase shifts respectively, and are the base-
drive the balancing process [5], and so uses a Double Fourier
band, carrier, and sideband harmonic magnitudes which are
series representation of the modulation process [15], [16] to
found by evaluating the Double Fourier integral. For PSCPWM
construct a linearized state-space model of the converter oper-
in the linear modulation region, it can be shown that
ation. The resulting models precisely show how the capacitor
voltage balancing dynamics vary as a function of load current, (4a)
modulation index, pulse ratio, and load frequency characteris-
tics. The analytical model has been fully verified against both (4b)
simulation and experimental studies.
for , and where
II. FLYING CAPACITOR CONVERTER TRANSIENT MODEL. is a Bessel function of the first kind with argument and
order .
The first step towards developing the analytic model is to de- For single phase multicell converters, can be set to zero
fine a transient circuit model for the capacitor voltages. This is without loss of generality, and the carrier phase shift for
done by analysing the th floating capacitor voltage within a the th cell can be set to either
multilevel phase leg, as shown in Fig. 3. The voltage across this
capacitor is determined by the current flowing through it, which (5a)
will be or zero depending on the cell switch states. (5b)
Assuming ideal devices (negligible commutation times and sat-
uration voltages), this relationship can be expressed as (These two alternative cases are where the th cell car-
rier waveform either leads or lags the th cell carrier waveform,
(1) as shown in Fig. 4. While this does not affect the switched
output, it influences the dynamic response, as discussed in
Section VI).
for , and where the switching function If (5) is substituted into (3), the switching difference functions
has the range of values . in (1) and (2) become
The load current is determined by a Kirchoff voltage
summation loop through the load impedance, written as

(6)

(2) 1A simple R-L load is used in (2) for ease of development. More general load
forms will be considered later in the paper.
MCGRATH AND HOLMES: ANALYTICAL MODELLING OF VOLTAGE BALANCE DYNAMICS FOR A FLYING CAPACITOR MULTILEVEL CONVERTER 545

Furthermore, the load impedance at can be represented

in general phasor form as:

(14)

Substituting (12), (13), and (14) into (2) and solving for the
steady-state ac sinusoidal solution at gives

(15)

Next, (12) and (15) are substituted back into (1) to develop a
forcing function at that drives the capacitor voltage deriva-
Fig. 4. Carrier arrangements and resulting cell gate signals for PSCPWM. (a) tives. Since both (12) and (15) are sinusoidal functions with the
Leading carrier arrangement. (b) Lagging carrier arrangement. same frequency, their product in (1) will result in a dc compo-
nent and a double harmonic frequency component. However,
since only the low frequency average response of the capacitor
voltages is of interest, the double frequency term can be ne-
glected. This results in the first-order state-space equation given
(7) by (16) with the capacitor voltages as the system states, which
can be readily rewritten as (17)
where
(8)

(9)

(10) (16)

(11a)
(11b)

depending on the PWM sequence used.

NOTE: (6) shows that the switching difference function
is a summation of only high-frequency car-
rier and sideband harmonics, since the dc offset and baseband (17)
harmonics are the same for all switching functions. Since (6) is
part of the forcing function for (1), this explicitly confirms that for .
(as previously identified in [5]–[8]) only the high-frequency Note in particular in these equations that only the capacitor
PWM switching harmonics determine the capacitor dynamic voltage derivative terms are harmonic frequency
voltage balancing behaviour. dependent—the driving capacitor voltages are the average
voltage values and they do not depend on .
IV. ANALYTICAL VOLTAGE BALANCE MODEL After manipulation, (17) can be written in matrix form as
The analytical capacitor voltage dynamic balance model is
(18a)
now developed by first considering the influence of a single
Fourier switching harmonic component. This analysis is then where
generalized to include all significant switching harmonics.
For any harmonic frequency , from (6) and (7) the th
harmonic of each switching difference function is given by (18b)
(12) (18c)
(13)
(18d)
for .
546 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 2, MARCH 2008

with
(18e)
(18f)

.. .. ..
. . . (18g)

and where the operator defines a complex conjugation.

Equation (18) is a linear state-space equation at the particular
harmonic frequency , with system states
, system input and with the and matrices
defined by the Double Fourier solution coefficients for the par-
ticular PSCPWM strategy to be considered [15], [16].
The complete model of the converter capacitor voltage
variations is then developed by the superposition summation of Fig. 5. Root-locus as a function of modulation index.
(18) for all appropriate harmonics (only carrier and significant
high-frequency sidebands are required, since as identified
earlier these are the harmonics that influence the capacitor
voltage dynamic performance). This can be simply done by
generalising the and matrices to

(19a)

(19b)

and the complete linearized transient circuit model of the

flying capacitor converter that analytically defines the dynamic
response of the capacitor voltages becomes
(20)
It is commented that the simplicity of this final formulation
has come about by taking advantage of the knowledge that the
PWM process produces only a line harmonic spectrum [15],
[16]. Hence the product of the switching functions and the load
current in (1), which would normally be expected to result in a
convolution integral in the frequency domain as applied in [7],
[8], reduces to the much simpler infinite summation expressions
defined in (19). Furthermore, experience has shown that no more
than ten sideband harmonic groups normally need to be con-
sidered in any practical analysis, since the effect of higher fre-
quency harmonics is usually well attenuated by the increase of
the load impedance with frequency. In this study, all subsequent
results obtained from the analytic model have been calculated
using the first ten sideband harmonic groups.
Once the linearized model has been developed, it allows the
dynamic variation in capacitor voltage balance to be readily
explored as system operating conditions change, using any
number of standard linear system analysis techniques. One
very common linear system analysis strategy is root locus,
which will now be used to illustrate the potential of this new
modelling technique.
Fig. 6. Root-locus as a function of carrier frequency.
V. ROOT-LOCUS ANALYSIS USING THE LINEARIZED MODEL
The linearized analytical model presented in this paper has
been used to investigate the capacitor voltage balancing depen-
dence on modulation index, carrier frequency and load resis-
tance. This analysis has been done by plotting the loci of the
system poles using the eigenvalues of the state-space matrices
defined in (20), and simply recalculating the co-efficients of the
matrices and at a number of points as these parameters are
varied.
The results are shown in Figs. 5–7 for a fi ve-level converter
with the circuit parameters defined in Table I, and show how
the loci of the system poles vary as the operating conditions
change. The results are quite revealing and show how the voltage
balancing dynamics can change by an order of magnitude, de-
pending on the operating point.
For example, in Fig. 5 it can be observed that the dominant
pole of the system (i.e., the pole closest to the axis) varies
from at a modulation index of , to at a mod-
ulation index of , to at a modulation index of
. It can also immediately be seen that the largest pole
value (which corresponds to the fastest damping/settling time)
occurs at the modulation index that creates the largest switching
MCGRATH AND HOLMES: ANALYTICAL MODELLING OF VOLTAGE BALANCE DYNAMICS FOR A FLYING CAPACITOR MULTILEVEL CONVERTER
TABLE I
FIVE LEVEL CONVERTER—CIRCUIT PARAMETERS
Fig. 7. Root-locus as a function of load resistance.
Fig. 8. Root-locus as a function of load inductance.
cell THD (i.e., ). This result is entirely consistent with
the understanding that the balancing process requires output
ripple current to be driven effectively, and the benefit of the root
locus analysis is that it allows the variation of damping with
modulation index to be explicitly determined.
This understanding is further supported by Fig. 6, which
shows the root-locus as a function of carrier frequency for a
constant modulation index. The system pole magnitudes are
larger at lower carrier frequencies, and this corresponds to
increased switching cell ripple current because the series load
reactance is smaller at the lower PWM harmonic frequencies.
Figs. 7 and 8 show the effect of load variation in a flying
capacitor converter, by plotting the root-locus as a function of
547
load resistance and inductance. Fig. 7 shows that for the con-
verter studied, there is clearly an optimal loading point from a
dynamic capacitor voltage balancing perspective, at a load resis-
tance of approximately 450 . For a smaller load resistance such
as 20 with a correspondingly higher load current, all three
root locus poles are very close to the axis, and this would
be expected to correspond to a slow and oscillatory voltage bal-
ancing response (in fact this is very close to one of the condi-
tions that was experimentally investigated, as shown in Figs. 11
and 12 in Section VI of this paper, and the response is clearly
slow and substantially underdamped). As the load resistance in-
creases and the load current reduces, the system damping in-
creases as the poles move away from the axis. Furthermore,
the real axis pole moves away from the axis more slowly than
the complex poles, so that the system damping rapidly increases
with reducing load current. However, and more importantly, the
recognition that voltage balance damping can decrease substan-
tially with increasing load current could be of great significance
in a real system design.
Fig. 8 shows how changes in load inductance can also af-
fect the dynamic voltage balance, with a significant reduction in
damping as the load inductance increases. This result was also
confirmed experimentally, and can be seen by comparing the re-
sponses shown in Figs. 11 and 12 to those in Figs. 15 and 16.
The above discussion is by no means exhaustive in terms of
exploring converter voltage balancing. However, it illustrates
how the analytical model presented here allows powerful linear
control analysis strategies such as root-locus to be used to in-
vestigate flying capacitor voltage balance performance under a
wide variety of load and operating conditions.
VI. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION OF THE ANALYTIC MODEL
The effectiveness of the analytic modeling method was
confirmed by comparing its predicted responses against ex-
perimental results obtained from a single phase five-level
experimental flying capacitor converter with the circuit pa-
rameters given in Table I. The experimental converter was
controlled using PSCPWM, which was implemented using
two TMS320F240DSP controllers synchronized to achieve
the leading or lagging carrier arrangements shown in Fig. 4.
Transient events were generated by using a controllable dc
power supply to step change the converter dc link voltage,
and the dynamic balancing response of the capacitor voltages
was then measured. The matching analytic converter model re-
sponse was calculated using MATLAB to solve the state-space
matrix equation defined by (20), with the matrix co-efficients
calculated to match the experimental conditions.
Fig. 9 compares the step response of the experimental con-
verter to that predicted by the analytic model. It can be seen
that while the analytical model appears to correctly predict the
resonant frequency of the system, the damping of the experi-
mental converter is clearly greater than theoretical predictions.
However, further experimental investigation identified that the
load resistance was not constant as was initially assumed, and
in fact significantly varied with frequency. This variation, mea-
sured experimentally, is shown in Fig. 10. Most of this load re-
sistance increase was found to be in the air-cored filter inductor,
548
Fig. 9. Step response of the five-level converter to a 50-V dc link step: Lagging
carrier arrangement, Load inductance = 19 mH.
Fig. 10. Measured load resistance versus frequency.
most probably because of mechanisms such as skin and prox-
imity effect.
The frequency dependence of the load resistance is easily in-
corporated into the analytic model using (14) and by fitting a
regression line to the experimental resistance data. When this
resistance data was included into the analytic model, the agree-
ment between the harmonic modeling approach and the exper-
imental system was much closer, as shown in Fig. 11. This
is quite an interesting result, since it suggests that the natural
voltage balancing mechanism in a physical flying capacitor con-
verter may be more damped and more robust than predicted,
simply because of the frequency dependence of the load resis-
tance.
Fig. 12 presented a further somewhat unexpected result, being
the step response of the converter when a leading carrier-mod-
ulation pattern is used. Comparing this response to that of the
lagging carrier strategy shown in Fig. 9, it can be seen that there
is a significant difference in the converter dynamics simply be-
cause of the PWM method used. Specifically, in Fig. 9 the
voltage exhibits a substantial initial dip in the opposing direction
to the change in the dc link voltage (such a response is typical
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 2, MARCH 2008
Fig. 11. Step response of the five-level converter to a 50-V dc link step with the
frequency dependence of the load resistance included: lagging carrier arrange-
ment, Load inductance = 19 mH.
Fig. 12. Step response of the five-level converter to a 50-V dc link step with the
frequency dependence of the load resistance included: leading carrier arrange-
ment, Load inductance = 19 mH.
of non-minimum phase systems), while this response is virtually
nonexistent in Fig. 12. The reason for this difference is readily
explained using the analytic model and plotting the system poles
and zeros for the two PWM strategies, as shown in Figs. 13
and 14. While the pole locations are clearly unaffected by the
modulation strategy, the zero locations are significantly altered,
and in particular the voltage response has a single right half
plane (RHP) zero which contributes a net negative gain at low
frequencies. This explains the nonminimum phase dip seen in
Fig. 9. For the leading carrier case, two RHP zeros are present,
giving rise to a 360 phase wrap-around ensuring a net positive
gain at low frequencies. Therefore no initial negative transient
response would be expected, as is clearly evident in Fig. 12.
Figs. 15 and 16 show analytical and experimental results
when the load inductance is substantially reduced, and it can be
seen that as predicted by the analysis, the converter’s transient
voltage balance response becomes well over-damped and much
faster for this load condition. Furthermore, the match between
analytic theory and experimental performance is extremely
good.
The two figures also show that the benefits of a leading carrier
arrangement compared to a lagging carrier arrangement are still
MCGRATH AND HOLMES: ANALYTICAL MODELLING OF VOLTAGE BALANCE DYNAMICS FOR A FLYING CAPACITOR MULTILEVEL CONVERTER
Fig. 13. Pole-zero map: five-level converter, lagging carrier arrangement,
Modulation index = 0:8; Load inductance = 19 mH.
Fig. 14. Pole-zero map: five-level converter, leading carrier arrangement,
Modulation index = 0:8; Load inductance = 19 mH.
significant even in the over-damped case, with no initial reverse
dip in for the leading carrier configuration.
In fact, for all cases studied during this project, the leading
carrier arrangement always mitigated the effect of the RHP
zeroes compared to the lagging carrier approach. Hence, at
least from a dynamic capacitor voltage balancing perspective,
the leading carrier arrangement would seem to be the preferred
modulation strategy for a flying capacitor converter, and this
result has not been anticipated from any other studies.
It is worth noting that the agreement between the analytic
model and the experimental results is closer for the case where
a 4 mH load inductance has been used (Figs. 15 and 16) as op-
posed to a 19-mH inductance (Figs. 11 and 12). The difference
between the two cases is most likely to be related to the system
damping. Damping mechanisms which have not been accounted
for analytically include device saturation voltage, and bleed re-
sistors placed across the flying capacitors. While these effects
are likely to be small in magnitude, for a lightly damped system
549
Fig. 15. Step response of the five-level converter to a 50-V dc link step: lagging
carrier arrangement, Load inductance = 4 mH.
Fig. 16. Step response of the five-level converter to a 50-V dc link step: leading
carrier arrangement, Load inductance = 4 mH.
(shown in Figs. 11 and 12) they may have a significant con-
tribution to the overall system response. In contrast, when the
system is over-damped as occurs in Figs. 15 and 16, these addi-
tional damping mechanisms are likely to contribute much less
to the overall system damping, explaining the improved match
between the experimental and analytic results.
VII. CONCLUSION
This paper has presented an analytic method for determining
the natural capacitor voltage balancing dynamics of flying ca-
pacitor converters. The technique uses a Double Fourier repre-
sentation of the converter switching functions to develop a lin-
earized converter dynamic circuit model, which is expressed as a
linear state-space equation with the capacitor voltages as system
states and the dc link voltage as the system input.
The linearized converter model can be used to explore the
variation of the voltage balancing dynamics against operating
parameters such as load resistance, modulation index, carrier
frequency, etc. using powerful linear control analysis strategies
such as root locus. Furthermore, the modeling and subsequent
analysis techniques presented in this paper can be applied to
single phase flying capacitor converters of any level.
550
The validity of the linearized model was verified by com-
paring it against a five-level experimental converter, and ex-
tremely good correlation was achieved once the frequency de-
pendence of the load resistance was taken into account in the
analytical model. The model was also used to explore the im-
pact of the PWM pattern on the converter balancing dynamics,
and it was found that a leading carrier arrangement between
the switching cells is preferable, since it mitigates the non-min-
imum phase response characteristic of the converter. This re-
sult was predicted theoretically and confirmed experimentally
for both under-damped and over-damped systems.
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Brendan Peter McGrath (M’99) received the
B.Sc. degree in applied mathematics and physics,
the B.E. degree in electrical and computer systems
engineering, and the Ph.D. degree in pulsewidth
modulation theory for multilevel converters from
Monash University, Clayton, Vic., Australia, in 1997
and 2003, respectively.
He spent two years with Creative Power Tech-
nologies, Melbourne, Australia, where he was part
of a development team working on auxiliary traction
converter systems and precise utility instrumentation
systems. In 2004, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Laboratoire
d’Electrotechnique et d’Electronique Industrielle (LEEI), Toulouse, France,
where he worked on the modulation of multicell converters. He has just recently
joined the faculty at Monash University, after having spent two years at the Uni-
versity of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. His principle research interests include
the modulation and control of multilevel power converters and the application
of signal processing and control theory to power conversion systems.
Dr. McGrath received the Douglas Lampard medal from Monash University
for his Ph.D. dissertation in 2004. He is a member of the IEEE Power Elec-
tronics, Industrial Electronics, and Industry Applications Societies.
Donald Grahame Holmes (M’88–SM’03) received
the B.S. degree and the M.S. degree in power
systems engineering from the University of Mel-
bourne, Melbourne, Australia, in 1974 and 1979,
respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in pulsewidth
modulation (PWM) theory for power electronic
converters from Monash University, Clayton, Vic.,
Australia, in 1998.
In 1984, he joined Monash University to work in
the area of power electronics, and he now heads the
Power Electronics Research Group at this university.
The present interests of this group include fundamental modulation theory and
its application to the operation of energy conversion systems, current regula-
tors for drive systems and PWM rectifiers, active filter systems for quality of
supply improvement, resonant converters, current-source inverters for drive sys-
tems, and multilevel converters. He has a strong commitment and interest in the
control and operation of electrical power converters and has made a significant
contribution to the understanding of PWM theory through his publications and
has developed close ties with the international research community in the area.
He has published well over 100 papers at international conferences and in pro-
fessional journals, and regularly reviews papers for all major IEEE transactions
in his area. He has recently co-authored a major reference textbook on PWM
theory (with T. Lipo of the University of Wisconsin-Madison) Pulse Width Mod-
ulation for Power Converters (New York: IEEE Press, 2003).
Dr. Holmes is an active member of the Industrial Power Converter and Indus-
trial Drive Committees of the Industrial Applications Society of the IEEE and
is a member of the Adcom of the IEEE Power Electronics Society.