International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
Volume 116 No. 13 2017, 137-142
ISSN: 1311-8080 (printed version); ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)
url: http://www.ijpam.eu
Special Issue
MODULATION TECHNIQUES IN SWITCHING DEVICES
1
P.Naveenchandran, 2Vijayaraghavan
1 2
Director Co-Director, Centre Of Excellence For Electric Mobility
1
naveen.auto@bharathuniv.ac.in
Abstract: A comparison between different modulation
strategies and reviewing their merits and limitations. Also
it gives a small explanation of the working principle of
the traditional and the advanced modulation techniques
starting with the set-up consists of combination of photo-
voltaic solar-cell array &Nano-anteena array, a
uninterrupted power supply mast mounted wind
generator the standard PWM and finishing with the
invention of the wavelet modulation technique (WM).
The output of the wavelet modulated power inverter is
found to be one of the best and the continuous-time
sinusoidal reference signal among all other modulation
techniques.
Index terms: critical review, Carrier modulation, PWM,
wavelet modulation.
1. Introduction
A simple power switch with a typical power source
provides full power only when switched on. DC-AC
inverters are electronic devices used to produce AC
power from DC source. This makes them very suitable
for whenever you need AC power as AC mains power is
not always available in remote areas. Most inverters do
their job byperforming two main functions: first they
convert the incoming DC into AC, and then they step up
the resulting AC to the needed voltage level using a
transformer. There are many ways to control the output
of the inverters; one of the efficient conventional
methods is the pulse-width modulation (PWM). PWM is
a very efficient way of providing intermediate
amounts[1-5] of electrical power. It is a comparatively
recent technique, made practical by modern electronic
power semiconductor switches. Modulation techniques
are used for switching and operating inverters and
controlled converters in order to produce output voltages
and currents with higher qualities for different types of
loads. By using these modulation techniques we can
control the switching electronic device to get the desired
amplitude and frequency with the desired quality. Several
switching techniques have been so far proposed to meet
the aforementioned objectives by achieving wide linear
modulation range, minimum switching losses and
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improved overall inverter efficiency and finally simple
implementation for practical applications [15]. There are
many types of modulation and some of them are:
Carrier modulation, such as;
1- Sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM)
2- Modified pulse width modulation (MPWM)
3- Space vector modulation (SVM)
4- Delta modulation (DM)
5- Specific harmonic elimination (SHE)
6- Wavelet modulation (WM).
The main aim of all of these techniques is to enhance
the output of the inverters in terms of the following
reasons. In other words, these various techniques are
designed to control the inverter switches in order to shape
the output ac voltage and currents to be as close to sine
wave as possible. Pulse width modulation (PWM) is the
first approach of modulation techniques which was
developed in the mid of 60s by Kirnnich, Heinrick and
Bowes. The quality of these techniques can be measured
by six factors:
9- The amplitude of the fundamental component,
10- The harmonic content in the inverter output,
11- The effect of harmonics on the source,
12- The switching losses,
13- Controllability,
14- Implementation.
2. The Modulation Techniques
1- (SPWM)
Some of the advantages of PWM based switching power
converter over the other techniques and The conventional
pulse-width modulation is the most widely used
technique all over the world because of its advantages or
because of that its disadvantages do not have that big
concern in most of the applications compared with its
advantages. Some can be in its easy to implement and
control and in its compatibility with almost all the
modern digital applications. However it has also some
disadvantages that might reduce its volubility in some
applications, such as its attenuation of the fundamental
frequency amplitude, its THD is reduced by increasing
the switching frequency but that will lead to the increase
 International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
of switching losses; which means greater stresses on the
associated switching devices and creation of high-
frequency components with high amplitudes[6-10].
2- (MPWM)
With a common principle and individual components,
solar power is converted into the electric power. The
Solar Power Generation System is planned accordingly
Fig. 1. The main principle of the MPWM is based on the
comparisons between two low-frequency modulating
signals with a triangular high frequency carrier. The first
modulating signal is similar to the fundamental signal of
the desired output voltage. The other modulating signal is
also similar to the first signal but with a phase shift of
180 electrical degrees. The advantage of the MPWM
over the conventional SPWM isin the location of the first
harmonic. Where the SPWM is pushing back the
harmonics towards the high frequencies by which the
first significant sideband of the output voltage spectrum
is located in the switching frequency sideband, However
the MPWM is able to shift back the first significant
harmonic to a frequency equal to twice of the switching
frequency. This means that the THD of the MPWM is
less than that of the SPWM with the same switching
frequency, but the fundamental component is not too
high. This method is easy to implement and control, but it
has some disadvantages in high switching stresses on the
semiconductor devices and also its effect of the harmonic
content on the input side is high as well.
3- (RPWM)
With a common principle and individual components,
solar power is converted into the electric power. The
Solar Power Generation System is planned accordingly
Fig. 1. Random pulse width modulation technique is
basically based on randomizing the frequency of the
carrier signal in order to distribute the concentrated
energy of the harmonic frequency of the inverter output
voltage in a narrow high frequency band. The main
purpose and advantage of this technique is to reduce the
energy of the harmonics, which in turn will reduce the
THD of the inverter output voltage. However, this action
will also affect the energy of the fundamental frequency
component, i.e. the amplitude of the fundamental
frequency component will be reduced as well, which is
the main disadvantage of this technique. Also it has a
significant drawback, which is the rapid deterioration of
quality of operation at low values of modulation index.
Moreover, randomizing the carrier frequency adds an
extra switching losses and extra stresses to the
semiconductor devices which in turn lead to add more
harmonics to the current signal in the input side[11-15].
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This technique can be summarized in three different
strategies as follows [8]:
A) Randomized Switching Frequency, which is also,
can be divided into two ways: the regular and the natural
sampling mode. In which the regular sampling mode is
characterized by randomly changing of the switching
intervals from cycle to cycle by an integer number N in
the output frequency. Whereas the natural sampling
method is obtained using either the classic triangular
carrier method or space vector method. The triangular
carrier signal, with which the reference voltage signal is
compared, can be generated with a randomly varying
slope In the case of space vector RPWM; these are the
consecutive increments of the angular position of the
reference voltage vector that are randomized.
B) Randomized Pulse Position; in which the pulses
of switching signals are randomly placed in individual
switching intervals.
C) Random Switching; in this method, randomly
fractional numbers, having uniform probability
distribution, are compared with the desired duty cycle of
the switching signals for individual phases of the
inverter[16-19].
4- (3HPWM)
With a common principle and individual components,
solar power is converted into the electric power. The
Solar Power Generation System is planned accordingly
Fig. 1. By injecting the 3rd harmonic to the three-phase
sinusoidal modulating signals, the inverter fundamental
frequency voltage can also be increased without causing
over modulation. In which, the modulating signal is
composed of the fundamental component and the third
harmonic component, making the signal somewhat
flattened on the top. As a result, the peak fundamental
component can be higher than the peak triangular carrier
wave which boosts the fundamental voltage.
The injected third harmonic component will not
increase the harmonic distortion in the output voltage.
Although it appears in each of the inverter terminal
voltages, the third-order harmonic voltage does not exist
in the line to line voltage. This is because the line to line
voltage is given by the relation Vab=Van - Vbn, where
the third-order harmonics in Van and Vbnare of zero
sequence with the same magnitude and phase
displacement and thus cancel each other. The main
disadvantage of this technique is that there is no defined
procedure for determining the proper amount of the
added third harmonic component [15].
 International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
5- (SVM)
With a common principle and individual components,
solar power is converted into the electric power. The
Solar Power Generation System is planned accordingly
Fig. 1. Space vector modulation for three-leg VSI is
based on the representation of the three phase quantities
as vectors in a two-dimensional (α, β) plane. To make the
output current must always be continuous, and also the
input lines must never be shorted, the voltage source
inverter can assume only eight distinct switching
topologies. The desired three phase voltages at the output
of the inverter could be represented by an equivalent
vector U rotating in the counter clock wise direction.
There are four types of SVM [29, 30, 31];
1) The right aligned sequence,
2) The symmetric sequence which has the lowest THD
because of the symmetry and the switching losses are
almost similar to the first one,
3) The alternating zero vector sequence, where the
switching losses for this scheme are to be ideally low as
compared to those of the previous two schemes and the
THD is significantly higher due to the existence of the
harmonics at half of the sampling frequency,
4) The highest current not switched sequence in which
the switching losses are the lowest compared with the
others because it avoids switching the phase carrying the
highest current. However, the sampling period Ts is the
same in all of them[20-23].
The converter input voltage can be represented by the
space vector U. The space vector U once can take one of
the eight different positions resulting from the
permissible combinations of the conduction states.
Vectors U1 to U6 have fixed modulus of ⅔ ×Udc and are
phase-shifted by π/3. They are called active vectors and
refer to the conduction states ofthe power semiconductor
switches during which the respective phases are
supplying the DC-link load. While the three upper or
three lower power semiconductor switches are
conducting simultaneously, the supply line is short-
circuited. These states are described by two zero vectors
U0 and U7. The zero vectors are located in the origin of
coordinates and they are represented by the two
concentric points. The converter input PWM voltage
space vector would change its position every π/3inside
the hexagon if the six active conduction states were
successively forced in the rectifier. The optional position
of the reference vector U* inside the sector can be
reached by providing the symmetrical control pulses
represented by the following switching sequence: U0-U1-
U2-U7-U2-U1-U0. In case when the reference vector U*
is moving throughout the first sector. In the other sectors
two next adjacent vectors should be considered [24-27].
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The Total Harmonic Distortion ratio of the line
current and voltage are equal THDI = 1.6% and THDV =
26.7% respectively [15]. For the linear modulation the
maximal length of the reference vector U* is equal to
U*max = Udc/ . The space vector modulation
corresponds to the sinusoidal modulation with the
additional zero sequence signals. 3
6- (DM)
Delta modulation technique has the advantage of easy
implementation, continuous converter voltage control,
and a direct control of the line harmonics. However, the
DM control has the drawback of low fundamental output
value and asymmetrical operation. This technique is
similar to other modulation technique, but the inherent
self-carrier generating feature of the DM technique
allows simple control process for varying the output
voltage. With the normal delta modulation technique, in
which the carrier signal has equal rising and falling
edges, the output voltage is maximally have the available
voltage. This limitation can be mitigated by asymmetrical
control of the modulator. In this way, the rising slope is
not equal to the falling slope of the estimated wave and
the quantizer threshold levels p and n control the output
voltage. When p >n, the output increases with the
increase of p; and n >p, the output decreases with the
increase of n [10].
Both modeling and experimental measurements
demonstrate that the individual nanoantennas can absorb
close to 90 percent of the available in-band energy.
Optimization techniques, such as, increasing the radial
field size could potentially increase this efficiency to
even higher percentages. The current and voltage values
from the wind turbine, solar panels, battery group, and
load are measured in the implemented system. Production
and consumption of power for each module can be
calculated. In order to allow separate chassis, a laptop
computer which is disconnected from the power line is
used to record the measurement data of the operating
system.
The delta modulation technique has recently drawn
great attention as a promising control scheme for static
power converters to achieve fast response [11, 12].
However, the DM control has the drawback of low
fundamental output value and asymmetrical operation
[10, 14] which was overcame by proposing the
rectangular wave DM, which can control the output
harmonics by adjusting its modulator parameters.
Because of its inherent V/f feature and the attenuation of
low order harmonics, the rectangular wave DM is
suitable for AC motor control. However, the inverter
output waveform is not synchronized with the control
 International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics
signal because the duty ratio modulation depends on the
slope of the control signal.
This asynchronous operation introduces a periodic
asymmetry resulting in the generation of sub-harmonics
which will cause unwanted torque pulsations. There are
many approached of DM are proposed so far, such as;
conventional delta modulator, delta modulator with PI
control, carrier synchronized DM, tuned delta modulator
and feed forward delta modulation.
7- (SHE)
Specific harmonic elimination is based on predefining
sets of switching angles in order to determine locations
and widths of the switching pulses. This type of inverter
has shown the possibility of eliminating certain
harmonics in the inverter output [2, 12, 15].
Essentially, to eliminate the same number of low
order harmonics, PWM-SHE requires the use of 50% less
switching pulse over the conventional carrier modulated
SPWM method [27]. This automatically implies less
stress on the switching device and hence less switching
loss. Higher quality inverter output voltage and current
waveform and a smaller filter size is attainable without
the expense of high switching loss[28-30].
This technique is a non-carrier based PWM scheme,
and it is based on the fact that conditions of quarter and
half wave symmetry are capable of eliminating even
indexed harmonics. Another key advantage of PWM-
SHE switching pattern is the inverter’s higher
fundamental output voltage component [27]. By
extending this concept it has led to consider angles of
switching pulses in the first quarter cycle as variables for
optimization in order to eliminate more harmonics from
the inverter output. The main disadvantage of this
method is its complicated implantation especially in
finding the switching angles [15].
8- Hysteresis-Band Current Control (HBCC)
It is based on calculating the error between the reference
output and the measured output signals. The switching
elements states are changed when the instantaneous
calculated error falls outside a pre-defined hysteresis
band in order to drive the error back within that
hysteresis band. Where the targeted output was the
inverter output current, and the early implementations of
hysteresis-band current control switching scheme were
based on a fixed hysteresis band. An adaptive current
controller was developed which uses a variable hysteresis
band. This controller suffered from the stability problems
as the load changes [15].
The sinusoidal hysteresis band was able to limit the
maximum switching frequency and improved both output
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Special Issue
current and voltage of the operated inverter. However,
this method requires that the controlled output quantity of
the inverter be integrated either by the load or as a part of
the controller. Thus, sub-harmonics may be present in
inverter outputs. These reasons made the hysteresis band
current control switching scheme not very useful for
industrial applications with low switching frequencies.
3. Conclusion
An investigation is carried out on the most important
modulation techniques .It has been found that this
technique is met with all measuring factors that are used
to the performance of any other modulation techniques
.By using this system, we can save electricity charge
charge to this equipment is required. The designing of
this equipment is done in such a way that it is very
compact and acts as user friendly an analysis of the
various state of art of modulation techniques.. All of the
investigated techniques have advantages and
disadvantages except the wavelet modulation which have
been recently invented: 1- The amplitude of the
fundamental component is high, The harmonic content in
the inverter output is low, The effect of harmonics on the
source is low, The switching losses are low,
Controllability is easy, Implantation is simple. On the
other hand, all other techniques have shortcoming in at
least one of the aforementioned factors. That is in turn
will reduce the efficiency of that technique. It provided
output voltages and currents with low harmonic content
along with high magnitudes of the fundamental
frequency component of the output voltage. In addition,
the performance comparison of the WM and all the other
modulation techniques revealed that the new WM
inverter can out-perform all of them under same
operating conditions.
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