See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/220776321

Power Op-Amp Based Active Filter Design with Self

Adjustable Gain Control by Neural Networks for EMI
Noise Problem

Conference Paper  in  Lecture Notes in Computer Science · August 2005

DOI: 10.1007/11538059_26 · Source: DBLP

CITATIONS READS
0 1,088

4 authors, including:

Mehmet Uzunoglu B. Vural

Yildiz Technical University 46 PUBLICATIONS   965 CITATIONS   
155 PUBLICATIONS   3,381 CITATIONS   
SEE PROFILE
SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Planning of electric vehicle charging infrastructure and development of smart charging management systems within
the concept of smart grids View project

DEVELOPMENT OF A SMART GRID-COMPATIBLE SMART HOME PROTOTYPE WITH THE AIMS OF IMPROVING ENERGY
EFFICIENCY AND LOWERING CARBON EMISSION View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Mehmet Uzunoglu on 09 April 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Power Op-Amp Based Active Filter Design with Self
Adjustable Gain Control by Neural Networks for EMI
Noise Problem

Kayhan Gulez, Mehmet Uzunoglu, Omer Caglar Onar, and Bulent Vural,

Yildiz Technical University, Faculty of Electrical and Electronics,

Department of Electrical Engineering, 34349, Besiktas, Istanbul, Turkey
{gulez, uzunoglu, conar, bvural}@yildiz.edu.tr

Abstract. An induction motor control system fed by an AC/DC rectifier and a

DC/AC inverter group is a nonlinear and EMI generating load causes
harmonic distortions and EMI noise effects in power control systems. In this
paper, a simulation model is designed for the control circuit and the harmonic
effects of the nonlinear load are investigated using FFT analyses. Also, the
EMI noise generated by the switching-mode power electronic devices
measured using high frequency spectrum scopes. An LISN based active filter
is used to damp the harmonic distortions and EMI noises in the simulation
environment. Neural network based control system is used to tune the power
op-amp gain of series active filter to obtain the voltage value stability at the
equipment side as well.

1 Introduction

Recently, the broader use of power electronic based loads (rectifiers, inverters, motor
control systems, etc.) has led to a growth of power pollution because of the nonlinear
voltage-current characteristics of these loads. Current and voltage harmonics that are
generated by the non-linear loads or by the switching devices in power electronics
system may cause a serious damage to any electrical equipment [1]. Thus, load
currents and voltages are nonsinusoidal and it is necessary to compensate voltage and
current harmonics. Also, EMI noise caused by load characteristics and switching
power electronic elements is an important problem for the network because of the
conducted EMI emissions on the common mode line of the grid propagated by the
switching elements. The compensation of these harmonics and EMI noise effects is
recently being more and more important and causing widespread concern to the
power system engineers have attracted special interests on active filtering.
The AF is classified into two types as series and shunt active filter. The series type
active filter is installed series to the nonlinear loads or harmonic generating loads and
works as the harmonic compensation voltage source. The shunt type active filter is
usually installed parallel to the loads. It works as the current source and compensates
the harmonic current of the load [2].

D.S. Huang, X.-P. Zhang, G.-B. Huang (Eds.): ICIC 2005, Part I, LNCS 3644, pp. 243 – 252, 2005.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005
244 K. Gulez et al.

In the engineering environment, EMI filters are called as “Black Magic” because
there has not been a well defined design method, the input and the output impedances
in the related circuit are not constant over the band of interest and the filter insertion
lost test method specifications often confuse or influence the design methods [1, 3].
In this paper, a three-phase active filter topology based on a basic one introduced and
developed in [1], [3], [4], [5], [6] is reviewed and used.
In a series active filter application, usually the output voltage of the filter is
lower than the input voltage of the filter because of the non-ideal cut-off
characteristic of the filter. This non-ideal characteristic causes the filter to cut-off an
amount of fundamental frequency component as leakage current. Also, the voltage
drop on the filter and line impedances, occurs a lowered voltage at the load side.
To provide the RMS voltage value stability at the equipment side, a self adjustable
gain control mechanism is used in this study. In this paper, “Fast Back-propagation
Algorithm” based artificial neural network architecture is taken as a control system
to adjust the filter gain at fundamental frequency to maintain the voltage value
stability as well. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) is successfully used in a lot of
areas such as control, DSP, state estimation and detection. Here, the results of a
practical case simulation in MATLAB & Simulink are present using Simulink as a
modeling environment and Neural Network Toolbox to create the neural network
structure.

1.1 EMI Noise Effects

EMI noises have bad effects on power system elements. EMI noises caused by the
switching-mode semiconductor devices or load characteristics can be divided into two
parts: Conducted EMI Emissions and Radiated EMI Emissions. In this study,
conducted EMI emissions are investigated in the simulation environment. Generally,
EMI noises causes [7],
• Uncontrolled switching states on power electronic devices working near the
EMI noise generating systems,
• Instability or oscillation problems in control systems,
• Parasitic effects on communication lines and data loss,
• Encoder feedback failures in motor control systems,
• Failures at programmable controller,
• Problems in remote controlled I/O systems,
• Wrong evaluations of sensing and measuring devices.

2 Simulation Network

A converter – inverter based induction motor control system is taken as a harmonic

and EMI noise source in this study. A general block diagram of the system is given
below in Fig. 1.
 Power Op-Amp Based Active Filter Design with Self Adjustable Gain Control 245

Fig. 1. Structure of the induction motor control system

The simulation network is modeled using MATLAB, Simulink and

SimPowerSystems which provides an effective platform for dynamic system
simulations [8, 9, and 10]. The Simulink model of the system is given in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Simulink model of the motor control system

3 EMI Measurement
A brief review of conducted EMI measurement is important before the filter design
stages. The Line Impedance Stability Network (LISN) is based on military standards
and is used by many electromagnetic interference and electromagnetic compatibility
test institutions. The LISN, required in the measurement, contains 56µH inductors,
22.5µF capacitors and 50Ω resistors. The single phase schematic of LISN circuit is
given in Fig. 3. of which topology is used by widespread EMI and EMC applications
[3, 4, 5 and 6].
246 K. Gulez et al.

Fig. 3. Single phase schematic of LISN network

At EMI noise frequency, the inductors are essentially open circuit, the capacitors
are essentially short circuit and the noise sees 50Ω measurement point. The noise
voltage, measured from the 50Ω resistors contains both common-mode (CM) noise
and differential-mode (DM) noise. Each mode of noise is dealt with by the respective
section of an active filter.

4 Active Filter Topology

As mentioned before, the active filter topology used in the paper are based on and
developed in [1], [3], [4], [5], [6]. The active filter topology is depicted as a basic
schematic in Fig. 4.
The op-amp circuit is modeled in Simulink environment. In modeling procedure,
the voltage controlled current source based equivalent circuit of an op-amp circuit
taken as a sample. The Simulink model of the op-amp circuit is given below in Fig. 5.

Fig. 4. Active filter topology

 Power Op-Amp Based Active Filter Design with Self Adjustable Gain Control 247

Fig. 5. The Simulink model of the equivalent op-amp circuit

The input and output impedance values and the internal gain of the op-amp are
taken from a catalogue of a real power op-amp circuit especially used in industrial
filtering applications.
In the active filter topology, the capacitor Cr absorbs most of the current source of
power supply generating a ripple voltage which must be dropped across the active
circuit with a minimal ripple current conducted through the utility. This function is
realized and achieved by the amplifier with gain A, input and output impedances Zin
and Zout, respectively. The other problem with the circuit is that the full line voltage is
across the output of the active circuit. It requires that Zout include a series blocking
capacitor, CO. Since this capacitor CO appears in series with the output of the
amplifier, its impedance is reduced by the magnitude of the amplifier’s gain. The
other important condition of active EMI filter is the compensation of feedback loop.
The point is that the loop transmission is simply the product of the amplifier gain and
the negative feed back [1, 2].

5 Artificial Neural Networks for Gain Control

A neural network can be trained to perform a particular function by adjusting the
values of the connections (weights) between elements. Commonly neural networks
are adjusted, or trained, so that a particular input leads to a specific target output.
Such a situation is shown below. There, the network is adjusted, based on a
comparison of the output and the target, until the network output matches the target.
Typically many such input/target pairs are used, in this supervised learning, to train a
network. The general diagram of such a training algorithm is given in Fig. 6 [11, 12].

Fig. 6. General diagram of neural network training structure

248 K. Gulez et al.

In this study, a fast back-propagation NN algorithm with 2 hidden layers, which

has 4 and 2 neurons in order, is used. Layers are tansig and output layer is purelin.
Maximum epoch is 250 and wanted goal is 1e-3. The architecture of ANN controller
is depicted in Fig. 7.

Fig. 7. Neural network structure control diagram

The neural network architecture including the layers is given in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8. Neural network layer and connection architecture

The Simulink diagram of the neural network structure is given in following figures.
A general input/output structure of the neural network and weights connections are
depicted in Fig. 9. and 10., respectively.

Fig. 9. I/O control structure of the neural network

 Power Op-Amp Based Active Filter Design with Self Adjustable Gain Control 249

Fig. 10. Weights diagram

The gain value of the active filter is trained using the voltage values at the
equipment side. To obtain the voltage value stability at the equipment side, the
gain of the active filter is determined using the neural network algorithm given
above.
Some values of phase-ground RMS voltage of the load side used in the training
process is given in Table 1.

Table 1. Some values of training set of ANN

Voltage (V) Gain

220 1
219 1.0046
218 1.0092
217 1.0138
216 1.0185
215 1.02223

The training performance is depicted in Fig. 11. including the goal and training
performance of the neural network.

Fig. 11. Neural network training performance

250 K. Gulez et al.

6 Simulation Results
The simulation results are investigated in terms of two other criteria; the EMI noise
suppress performance of the active filter and the neural networks based adaptive gain
control performance of the filter, respectively.

6.1 Active Filter EMI Suppress Performance Analysis

In the induction motor control system, the common mode EMI noises are distributed
to the other power system and control components by the common mode line of the
inverter output phases. The common mode current waveform including high
frequency EMI noises is given in Fig. 12 which obtained as a simulation result.

Fig. 12. Common mode line current of induction motor control system

The spectrum analyzer result showing noise condition before and after the active filter
is given in Fig. 13.a and Fig. 13.b, respectively.

Fig. 13.a and Fig. 13.b Spectrum analyzer results and EMI suppress performance of the filter
 Power Op-Amp Based Active Filter Design with Self Adjustable Gain Control 251

6.2 Active Filter Gain Control Performance

In the neural network based active filter gain control performance, another induction
motor control system with the same motor and mechanic load parameters is connected
to equipment side of the power system. Because of the extra power demand and noise
effects of the second induction motor control system, the filter loss and the voltage
drop on the line and filter impedances are increased and the equipment side RMS
voltage value is decreased. To connect the other motor and the control system, a
three-phase switch is used closing at simulation time t=0.5 second. The simulation
system used to analyze the gain control performance is given below in Fig. 14.

Fig. 14. Simulation model of the neural network based gain control

As given in Fig. 12., the line voltmeter and a RMS value calculator is used to
measure the line-end voltage. The RMS value of the voltage is used as an input to the
neural network based control system and the neural networks determine the gain of
the active filter to maintain the voltage stability. The RMS value of the line end
voltage of the power system is given with and without the NN based gain controller in
Fig. 15.a and Fig. 15.b respectively.

Fig. 15.a and Fig. 15.b Line end voltage with and without neural network controller
252 K. Gulez et al.

7 Conclusions
Current and voltage harmonics and EMI noise generated by the non-linear loads or by
the switching devices in power electronics system may cause a serious damage to any
electrical equipment. Also, EMI noise caused by switching power electronic elements
is an important problem for the network. In this study, an active filter with self
adjustable gain control by neural networks is designed for EMI noise problem in
power control systems. The active filter gain is controlled by neural network
algorithms to regulate the line end voltage which decreases under varying load
conditions and filter loss. In the simulation results, not only the EMI noise effects
suppressed but also the equipment side voltage is regulated.

Acknowledgment. The research carried out by the support of Scientific Research

Coordinatorship of Yildiz Technical University for the research projects numbered
24-04-02-01 and 24-04-02-03. The authors are thankful for the support of Scientific
Research Coordinatorship of Yildiz Technical University.

References
1. Gulez, K., Mutoh, N., Ogata, M., Harashima, F., Ohnishi, K.: Source Current Type Active
Filter Application With Double LISN For EMI Noise Problem In Induction Motor Control
Systems, SICE Annual Conference (2002) International Conference on Instrumentation,
Control and Information Technology, Osaka, JAPAN
2. Peng, F., Z., Kohata, M., Akagi, H.: Compensation Characteristics of Shunt Active and
Series Active Filter, T.IEE Japan, Vol. 110-D, No.1 (1993)
3. Ozenbough, R., L.: EMI Filter Design Second Edition Revised and Expanded, Mercel
Dekker, Inc., New York, USA (2001)
4. Gulez, K., Hiroshi, Watanabe, Harashima, F.: Design of ANN (Artificial Neural
Networks) Fast Backpropagation Algorithm Gain Scheduling Controller of Active
Filtering, Vol. 1 TENCON (2000) 307-312
5. Farkas, T.: A Scientific Approach to EMI Reduction, M.S. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Cambridge, MA, August (1991)
6. Farkas, T.: Viability of Active EMI Filters for Utility Applications, IEEE Trans. On
Power Electronics, Vol. 9 (1994) 328-336
7. MTE Corporation: EMI/RFI Filters, EMI Sources, Standards and Solutions Online
Manual (2000)
8. MATLAB The Language of Technical Computing: Getting Started with MATLAB
Version 7, The MathWorks Inc (MATLAB, Simulink, SimPowerSystems and Neural
Network Toolbox are registred trademarks of The MathWorks Inc.)
9. SimPowerSystems For Use with Simulink: User’s Guide Version 4, Hydro-Québec
TransÉnergie Technologies, The MathWorks Inc.
10. Uzunoglu, M., Kızıl, A., Onar, O. C.: Her Yonu ile MATLAB 2e (Prificiency in
MATLAB, 2e) (in Turkish), Turkmen Publication, Istanbul (2003)
11. Neural Network Toolbox: User’s Guide Version 4.0, The MathWorks Inc.
12. Karayiannis, N. B., Venetsanopoulas, A. N.: Artificial Neural Networks –Learning
Algorithms, Performance Evaluation and Applications, Kluwer Academic Publishers
(1994) 161-195

View publication stats