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Procedia Computer Science 171 (2020) 576–582

Third International Conference on Computing and Network Communications (CoCoNet’19)

Third International Conference on Computing and Network Communications (CoCoNet’19)
FOPID Controller for Buck Converter
FOPID Controller for Buck Converter
Adhul S Vaa, T Ananthanbb
Adhul S V , T Ananthan
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Amritaof
Department School of Engineering,
Electrical Coimbatore
and Electronics Engineering
Amrita
Amrita Vishwa
School Vidyapeetham,
of Engineering, India
Coimbatore
Amritaadhul.viru@gmail.com
Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India
adhul.viru@gmail.com

Abstract
Abstract
The implementation of a Fractional Order Proportional Integral Derivative (FOPID) controller for a DC-DC Buck converter is
The implementation
presented of aPower
in this paper. Fractional Order Proportional
conversion Integral
in such converters is Derivative (FOPID) controller
a critical operation. for a DC-DC
Efficient conversion Buck converter
of power can lead tois
extension of
presented in battery life, Power
this paper. reduction in heat, and
conversion allows
in such it to buildissmaller
converters gadgets.
a critical TheseEfficient
operation. can be achieved
conversionby designing
of power an
canefficient
lead to
extension
controller.of battery life,
Recently, reduction
fractional in controller
order heat, and allows it to build
is found be an smaller gadgets.
alternative These
for the can be achieved
conventional by designing
Proportional Integralan efficient
Derivative
controller. Recently,
(PID) controller, so asfractional order
to achieve controller
better is found
controller to be an The
performance. alternative for the conventional
FOPID-based Buck converter Proportional Integral
is implemented in Derivative
MATLAB
and thecontroller,
(PID) controllersoisas
tuned using the
to achieve Nelder
better Mead performance.
controller method of optimization in FOMCON
The FOPID-based Toolbox. The
Buck converter implemented
is implemented in controller's
MATLAB
and the controller
performance is tunedwith
is compared using
thethe
PIDNelder MeadThe
controller. method of optimization
simulation in FOMCON
results shows Toolbox.
that the transient The implemented
performance controller's
of the device using
performance is compared
the FOPID controller with the
has been PID controller.
significantly The simulation results shows that the transient performance of the device using
improved.
the FOPID controller has been significantly improved.
© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
©
© 2020
2020
This The
The
is an Authors.
accessPublished
Authors.
open Published by
by Elsevier
article under Elsevier B.V.
B.V.
the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review
This under
is an open responsibility
access ofthe
article under theCC
scientific
BY-NC-ND committee of(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
license the Third International Conference on Computing and Network
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Third International Conference on Computing and Network
Peer-review
Communications under responsibility
(CoCoNet’19)
Communications (CoCoNet’19). of the scientific committee of the Third International Conference on Computing and Network
Communications (CoCoNet’19)
Keywords: DC-DC converter, buck converter, FOPID
Keywords: DC-DC converter, buck converter, FOPID

1. Introduction
1. Introduction
Most of the power converters use PID controllers due to its simplicity and applicability to a wide range of
Most ofBuck
problems. the power converters
converters are oneuse PIDpower
of the controllers due which
converters to its simplicity
is commonlyandrequired
applicability to a wide
in electronic rangeThe
devices. of
problems.
output Buck isconverters
voltage regulatedare one the
using of the power converters
switching whichofis power
pulse. Control commonly requiredplays
converters in electronic devices.
an important roleThe
in
output voltage
achieving is regulated and
the requirements using the switching
standards pulse. Control
of the relevant of power
application. converters
Whatever plays an important
the application role in
be major aspects
achieving
driving thethe
endrequirements
goal will be and standards
reliability, of the
energy relevant power
efficiency, application.
density,Whatever the and
complexity, application
cost. Thebeadvent
major of
aspects
buck
driving the in
converters end goal will demands
automation be reliability, energy efficiency,
the controller domain topower density,
be more complexity,
robust and
and flexible cost.drives
which The advent of buck
the quality of
converters in automation demands the controller domain to be more robust and flexible which drives the quality of

1877-0509 © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This is an open
1877-0509 access
© 2020 Thearticle under
Authors. the CC BY-NC-ND
Published license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under
This is an open responsibility
access of the scientific
article under CC BY-NC-NDcommittee of the
license Third International Conference on Computing and Network Communications
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
(CoCoNet’19)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Third International Conference on Computing and Network Communications
(CoCoNet’19)

1877-0509 © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Third International Conference on Computing and Network
Communications (CoCoNet’19).
10.1016/j.procs.2020.04.062
 Adhul S V et al. / Procedia Computer Science 171 (2020) 576–582 577
2 Adhul S Va, T Ananthanb / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000

control to the next level. This pushes the demand for a better performing controller which will be more trustworthy
and accurate in control parts.

PID controllers continue to provide a better result for the controller action. Research was conducted to further
improve traditional controller robustness. The limitations of the device, such as its sensitivity to process parameter
adjustments and power degradation as system order increases forced researchers to strive for a solution for the new
controller, which culminated in the introduction of fractional calculus to PID controllers. The entry of fractional
calculus to the controller parameters, integrative and derivative part of PID controllers, makes the
fractional controller. This makes controllers accessible with a maximum of five regulation parameters (Kp, Ki, Kd, λ,
μ) against the three PID controller parameters (K p, Ki, Kd). By applying the fractional operator, the advantages of
having better control over dynamic systems and less prone to shifting parameters of a controlled system can be fully
optimized.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 describes the introduction of the fractional controller. A literature
survey carried out in this area is detailed in section 2. Section 3 discusses the theoretical background of the proposed
controller and results are explained in section 4. The conclusion is included in the final section.

2. Literature Survey

There have been several advances and experiments in the area of fractional computations over three decades, and
this has contributed to the recent introduction of fractional calculation in control theory. The development of
Fractional calculus has started along with its integer counterpart. Fractional calculus was probably first mentioned
by Leibniz and L’Hospital in 1695 when they asked of having a half-order derivative as an alternative of an integer
order derivative [1]. Another analysis was speed regulation of DC motor utilizing fractional-order power. Fractional
calculus for the conventional controller offers novel and higher efficiency extensions [2]. Utilizing the search
algorithm the controller optimization is being carried out. The character and design technique will be analyzed to
improve the accuracy of the fractional order of the PIλDμ controller [3]. To achieve robustness for the controller
operator, development criteria such as step range, gain cross-frequency, and robustness is accounted [4]. Researches
have been carried out for the fractional-order controller implementation and that led to the implementation of
FOMCON toolbox in MATLAB environment [6]. The controller has been developed for controlling fluid levels in a
coupled tank system [7].

Implementation of the position servo system also been made using the fractional-order controller [8]. In this both
the real-time practical aspects of tuning and hardware realization of the controller been carried out. The general
control performance, the disruption rejection property, and the plant's trajectory monitoring capacity are validated
using the Lab VIEW. The efficiency of the controller over the conventional controllers is evaluated. Four standard
optimization algorithms namely artificial bee colony, cuckoo search algorithms, gray wolf Optimizer, and particle
swarm optimization are used. It revealed efficient energy using the nature of the fractional system [10]. The
fractional controller has been used for speed regulation of PMBLDC motor and it provided a robust framework. A
new technique used to design dynamic particulate swarm (dPSO) in order to recognize control parameters. For the
implementation of the digital controller [12], the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) was used. The implemented
digital controller improved overall system performance. The fractional-order comparison with its integer counterpart
is carried out and the latter showed an improved characteristic than the PID [11] [13]. The designed controller
structure is based on the chosen order of fractional operator. The implemented controller design makes it more
flexible and adaptive. The controller is intended to regulate the position of an inverted pendulum with two wheels.
Two additional parameters (λ and μ) are to be optimized and in total five configurations in a PID fractional-order
controller. Optimization algorithms are effective controller design techniques and guarantee optimum controller
parameters. Each optimization algorithm has a distinct output not only due to the algorithm's composition but also
depending on the subject of optimization [14]. The advantages of fractional order controllers over controllers seen
from both simulations and experiments. The advantage of implementing the fractional controller is that the potential
control effort is less [15]. This makes minimum wastage of energy. Recent researches for controller design for boost
578 Adhul S V et al. / Procedia Computer Science 171 (2020) 576–582
Adhul S Va, T Ananthanb / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000 3

converter is carried out and is compared with the integer-order controller implementation and also implemented in
real-time scenarios [9][16]. The real-time scenario showed the practical feasibility and effectiveness of the controller
under several operating conditions. The literature survey carried out gives an in view of the implementation of the
fractional controller and how its controller improves the system performance.

3. Theoretical Background

A branch of mathematics, fractional calculus dealt with powers of integral and differential with real numbers.
This has changed the common concepts of integration and differentiation. In a fractional order controller, the value
of power varies from [0, 1]. The introduction of fractional controllers in the control field is mainly because of these
two additional tuning parameters (λ and µ) that can be used to adjust the control action. The two tuning parameters
of the controller provides much better control for dynamic systems, a more robust, flexible and wider range of
operation for the controller. This makes it a suitable alternative for conventional controllers. The basic controller
equation representation for the respective controllers are given in equation (1).
FOPID controller equation is of the form

(1)
Where the order of integral is the lambda (λ) and the order of differentiation is mu (µ) is. These two additional
tuning parameters gives extra degrees of freedom for tuning the controller which makes the control action more
accurate and robust. The variation of these values can be clearly visualised in Fig. 1. Based on the order of integral
and differentiator the controller the type of When the value of (λ, µ) is (0,0) it is a proportional controller, (0,1) it is
a PD controller, (1,0) it is a PI controller and if it is (1,1) it is the PID controller.

Fig. 1. Generalization of the FOPID controller

The calibration of all the controller's five parameters is a huge task. In this proposed implementation Nelder Mead
optimization method is used for tuning the controller. For a FOPID controller the integral and differential order
value varies in between 0 and 1.

4. Implementation

The transfer function for the converter is given by the equation (2) below. The buck converter's simple and basic
circuit diagram is shown in Fig.2.
(2)
Where, the coefficients a, b and c are given by

The design specification of the buck converter is given in Table 1. The specifications are calculated using the basic
design equations for buck converter design. The transfer function for the designed buck converter is given by
equation (3).
(3)
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Adhul S V et al. / Procedia Computer Science 171 (2020) 576–582 579

Table 1. Design Specification.

Parameter Value
Input Voltage, 207
Output Voltage, 55
Load Resistance, 10
Inductor Resistance, 0.52
Inductance, 0.692
Capacitance, 0.000003125

Fig. 2 displays the simple block diagram for the FOPID buck converter.

Fig. 2. Circuit diagram of basic Buck Converter

Fig. 3. FOPID controlled Buck Converter block diagram

4.1. Tuning Of FOPID controller for Buck converter

The fractional-order controller has a total of five controller tuning parameters. The controller has to be properly
tuned using a suitable method. The controller is tuned using the Nelder Mead method utilizing the FOMCON
toolbox [5]. The Nelder Mead method is a heuristic technique of optimization. In this case, optimization relates to
the problem of finding point(s) in a search space with the desired value of an objective variable. The search begins
with a randomly generated simplex. Simplex is an n-dimensional version of a triangle. It reshapes/moves this
simplex at each iteration, at a time one vertex, to an optimal search space region. It simply makes one or a few
improvements to the current simplex during each stage and selects one that moves it to a 'better' domain area. When
the optimization starts it returns vertex of the simplex which produces the greatest desirable objective value.
The steps involved in the Nelder Mead optimization method are ordering, computing centroid and the
transformation. In order, all points are ordered or sorted in such a way that the first point is the lowest and the last
point is the highest.
Let the first (worst), second (second worst) and last (best) points index be respectively h, s, l. Ordering is followed
580 Adhul S V et al. / Procedia Computer Science 171 (2020) 576–582
Adhul S Va, T Ananthanb / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000 5

by the process of computing the centroid. The centroid can be calculated using equation (4).
(4)
The transformation is the most important and the next step followed. Transformation happens in one of these
following ways like reflection, expansion, contraction or shrinks contraction. The reflection is the first kind of
transformation that has been attempted. The reflected point can be calculated using equation (5):
(5)
Where is the reflection parameter and assigned to 1. is fundamentally a point on the line joining c and , but
positioned from distance. This changes the simplex away from the region around the sub-optimal . In the hope
of getting a better solution, we move a little bit more in the direction of from c. The expanded point is calculated
using equation (6):
(6)
Where is the expansion parameter and is assigned to 2 in most implementations. If the reflection point calculated
was worse, then the direction defined earlier won’t be suitable to proceed. In such cases, the simplex is contracted
inwards. The contradiction point is calculated using the equation (7):
(7)
The contraction method is followed by shrink contraction. In this event, we redefine the entire simplex. Only retain
the best point ( ), and outline all others with respect to it and the preceding points. The jth new point will now be
defined by equation (8):
(8)
Where is the shrinkage parameter, and are equivalent to 0.5 in most implementations. This makes the particle
move in the simplex in the present best point direction by pushing all point towards the current best point in the
simplex in the hope of converging to the best neighborhood. The optimization will be terminated when the number
of iterations is reached or simplex ranges a minimum limit of the size or when the present best solution crosses the
reasonable threshold.

5. Results

Using a fractional order controller, the designed buck converter is controlled and compared to its PID
counterpart. The fractional controller is optimized using the Nelder Mead optimization method in the FOMCON
toolbox. The Simulink block diagram for the implemented controller for the system is shown in Fig.4From the
FOMCON toolbox, the fractional controller block is obtained. The controller gain parameters are given in Table. 2
for the respective controllers. The performance output index values are obtained on the basis of the tuned controller
values. The controller’s performance indices for the system are listed in Table 3.

Fig. 4. Simulink block diagram for FOPID controller for the buck converter
6 Adhul S Va, T Ananthanb / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000
Adhul S V et al. / Procedia Computer Science 171 (2020) 576–582 581

Table 2. Design Specification. Table 3. Performance Index Values

Controller Parameters PID FOPID Performance

ISE IAE ITAE
Index
Kp 0.0067 0.0567
PID 603.9 21.42 9.99
Ki 0.2055 0.1205
Kd 0.000147 0.005147
λ 1 0.85 FOPID 205.7 7.3 3.16

µ 1 0.55

The transient parameters of the implemented FOPID controller and PID are listed in Table. 4. The modified
controller showed significant betterment in performance than the regular PID system. It has a greater rise in time,
time to settle, and overshoot rate, which is highly desirable for a fast, responsive process. The buck converter
response of both the PID and FOPID controller is shown in Fig. 5. The two additional degrees of freedom available
for tuning the controller has made it a better alternative for the conventional PID controller. The tuning of the
Fractional Order controller is very computationally intensive and an algorithm based on searches is used to locate
the parameters of the controller. Many such search based algorithm has been used to tune the proposed controller
which again further improves the controller response.

Table 4. Performance Index Values

Parameter PID Controller FOPID Controller

Rise time (s) 0.5679 0.1178

Settling time(s) 2.0392 0.2117

Overshoot (%) 7.9521 0.4752

Peak (V) 59.3793 55.0698

Peak Time (s) 1.2280 0.4232

Fig. 5. PID and FOPID controller device response for the buck converter
582 Adhul S V et al. / Procedia Computer Science 171 (2020) 576–582
Adhul S Va, T Ananthanb / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000 7

6. Conclusion

The simulation analysis of FOPID controller is performed using MATLAB software. When the performance
indices of the best tuned PID and FOPID controller is compared. The implemented controller showed significant
improvement in the performance. The comparison of the transient parameters is also carried out for them, which
also proved of having better performance for the proposed controller. The parameters of the controller are tuned in
offline mode using the Nelder Mead method. The system performance can be further enhanced through the online
method tuning of the controller using Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO).

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