Comparative Study of the Second-Order and
Third-Order Systems for the Synchronization
System under Distorted Grid Conditions
Tuan Ngo, Member, IEEE, and Tuyen Vu, Member, IEEE,
Abstract—This paper presents our research on the perfor-
mance of the grid synchronization system in a grid-connected
inverter under distorted grid conditions. The generalized second-
order and the third-order synchronization systems which are
widely implemented in the inverter applications are compared in
detail. Note that these synchronization systems are derived based
on the transfer function approach and are able to generate two
orthogonal outputs which are basically sine and cosine signals
in the steady-state. It is interesting to see that the second-order
system can give the same performance as the third-order system
in terms of harmonic injection if its poles are designed properly.
The simulation and experimental results are presented to confirm
that these generalized systems are able to generate two perfectly
orthogonal outputs to determine the grid information, i.e. voltage
magnitude and phase angle. In addition, the performance of
the generalized second-order and third-order systems under the
distorted grid conditions are discussed. It is verified later that the
second-order system is able to remove harmonics and accurately
detect the grid information. In other words, the second-order
system has similar to the third-order system if it is carefully
designed.
Index Terms—Grid synchronization, SOGI, third-order syn-
chronization system, harmonic rejection.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The grid synchronization system plays an important role
inside the inverter for the grid-connected applications. This
system helps to identify the grid frequency, the voltage mag-
nitude and phase angle for synchronizing. There are many pro-
posed configurations for the grid synchronization system in the
literature and the second-order generalized-integrator (SOGI)
technique was widely adopted in the grid-connected inverter
applications [1], [2]. This technique utilizes two integrators to
form an oscillator in order to generate two orthogonal output
signals. From these output signals, the grid information such
as voltage magnitude and phase angle can be obtained. Due
to its simplicity and robustness, this technique is preferred in
the grid synchronization system of an inverter. However, one
major drawback of this technique according to the literature is
that it cannot operate properly under distorted grid conditions
due to the low attenuation capability of a second-order system.
A possible solution is using multiple SOGIs in which many
SOGI blocks are arranged in parallel to detect the fundamental
voltage waveform and the harmonics [3]. The harmonics are
then used to cancel the harmonics in the input and thus
results in sinusoidal outptus. This method, however, requires
the information of all harmonic contents in the input voltage,
and also needs many SOGI blocks arranged in parallel to
eliminate harmonics and compute the fundamental waveform.
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Many attempts trying to improve the performance of grid
synchronization under unbalanced or distorted grid conditions
have been proposed [4]–[7]. The most common methods are
adding another filter such as a compensator [4] or a digital
filter [8], [9] to remove harmonics. Another approach involve
increasing the SOGI system to a third-order or higher order
system. This work can be simply achieved by adding an inte-
grator to the conventional SOGI structure. Due to higher atten-
uation capability, the third-order systems have better behaviors
to harmonic distortions as reported. For example, in [10], the
complex vector is employed to derive the grid synchronization
configuration. Since the complex-vector pre-filter is adopted,
the system is able to lock its outputs at the fundamental
frequency with sinusoidal waveforms. Another similar work
is presented in [7], [11]. An integrator is employed to the
conventional SOGI to filter a dc-offset or harmonics from
grid voltages. These third-order configurations can simply
remove offset in comparison to the method proposed in [12],
[13]. More importantly, this method can filter harmonics in
unbalanced voltages for grid synchronization. Our motivation
in this paper is to compare in detail the performance of
the second-order and the third-order synchronization systems
under distorted conditions. We believe the second-order system
can give similar behaviors as the third-order system if its poles
are designed properly. Moreover, the second-order system is
able to response faster to the harmonics in comparison to the
third-order system.
This paper begins in Section II by reviewing the general-
ized second-order system and the third-order system through
the transfer functions and their Bode plots. Section III
then presents the detailed investigation into the behaviors of
the second-order system to the harmonic input through the
Laplace-domain and the time-domain. Section IV presents the
performance of the generalized second-order and third-order
systems under different grid conditions. The simulation and
experimental results show that the two systems are able to
generate two perfectly orthogonal outputs from the input and
thus accurately identify the grid information. The performance
of two generalized systems are also verified with a distorted
grid input. The third-order system is able to reject the harmon-
ics. The second-order system also proves that it can completely
filter the harmonics and can have better performance compared
to the third-order system if it is carefully designed. Finally,
Section V delivers remark conclusion for the applications of
the second-order and the third-order synchronization systems.
1
 II. T HE G ENERALIZED F ORMS OF THE G RID
S YNCHRONIZATION C ONFIGURATIONS BASED ON T HE
T RANSFER F UNCTION A PPROACH
This section presents the summary of the generalized forms
for the second-order and the third-order systems based on the
transfer function approach. The Bode plots of each system
are presented and then several special configurations of the
synchronization system are listed.
The second-order generalized-integrator (SOGI) method
was introduced for the grid-connected inverter applications
to synchronize with the power grid [1], [14]. This method
utilizes two integrators to form a second-order oscillator as
shown in Fig. 1. The SOGI generates two outputs, v 0 and
qv 0 , which are purely sine and cosine signals to calculate the
Equations from (3) and (4) present the generalized forms
of the second-order grid synchronization system. Fig. 2 shows
√ of these two transfer functions with a0 = 0.5
the Bode plots
and a1 = 2ω. As can be seen from that figure, the two
outputs are only equal in magnitude at the central frequency,
i.e. ω. The phases of these outputs, however, are always 90◦
difference. In other words, the outputs of the generalized
second-order system are sine and cosine at the steady-state.
Bode plots of generalized second-order system
20
GV' (s)
GQV' (s)

Magnitude (dB)
0
rms value and the phase angle of the sinusoidal input vin .
The operating principles of SOGI can be explained from the -20
transfer functions of two outputs and from their Bode plots [1].
The following subsections present in detail the second-order -40
and the third-order system. 90

Phase (deg)
0

vin εv R v0
+
- ks + X -90
-
-180
qv 0 R 10
0
10
1
10
2
10
3
X Frequency (Hz)

ω0 Fig. 2. Bode plots of the generalized second-order synchronization system.

Fig. 1. A typical SOGI configuration for the grid synchronization.

It is interesting to see that if a0 = 0 and a1 = ks ω, then
(3) and (4) becomes

A. The transfer function approach for the second-order system ks ωs

GV 0 (s) = (5)
Assuming GV 0 (s) and GQV 0 (s) are the transfer functions s2 + ks ωs + ω 2
of outputs V 0 (s) and QV 0 (s) corresponding the input Vin (s), ks ω 2
GQV 0 (s) = (6)
respectively. Note that the relation GQV 0 (s) = (ω/s)×GV 0 (s) s2 + ks ωs + ω 2
is always held in order to generate a sine and a cosine functions
which are nothing but the transfer functions of the SOGI in
at the steady-state [15]. The generalized second-order forms
the literature and were presented in Fig. 1.
for GV 0 (s) and GQV 0 (s) can be given by

a0 s2 + a1 s + a2 B. The transfer function approach for the third-order system

GV 0 (s) = (1)
s2 + b1 s + b2
The third-order systems have benefits over the second-order
ω a0 s2 + a1 s + a2 ω(a0 s2 + a1 s + a2 )
GQV 0 (s) = × 2 = ones in terms of harmonic blocking as reported in [10], [11].
s s + b1 s + b2 s(s2 + b1 s + b2 ) Similar to the previous subsection, the generalized form for
Evaluating GV 0 (s) at the central frequency, i.e. s = jω, and the third-order system is given by
set it to 1. Then,
N (s) b0 s3 + b1 s2 + b2 s + b3
a0 s2 + a1 s −a0 ω 2 + a1 jω GV 0 (s) = = (7)
GV 0 (s = jω) = 2 = = 1 (2) D(s) s3 + a1 s2 + a2 s + a3
s + b1 s + b2 −ω 2 + b1 jω + b2
By grouping real and imaginary parts from (2), the co- In order to find the form of GV 0 (s), the denominator of (7)
efficients relation is: b1 = a1 and b2 = (1 − a0 )ω 2 . The is first evaluated at the central frequency, ω. Denoting ki =
generalized transfer functions are then (a2 − ω 2 ), kr = (a1 − a3 /ω 2 ), and j 2 = −1, then at s = jω

D(s = jω) = (jω)3 + a1 (jω)2 + a2 (jω) + a3

a0 s2 + a1 s
GV 0 (s) = (3) = (a3 − a1 ω 2 ) + jω(a2 − ω 2 )
s2 + a1 s + (1 − a0 )ω 2
ω(a0 s + a1 ) = kr (−ω 2 ) + ki (jω) = kr (jω)2 + ki (jω)
GQV 0 (s) = (4) , kr (s)2 + ki (s) f or (s = jω) (8)
s2 + a1 s + (1 − a0 )ω 2

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 From (8), the numerator of GV 0 (s) can be simply selected system is carefully designed it can have same performance as
as: N (s) = kr s2 + ki s. The transfer functions of the third- a third-order system in terms of harmonic rejection. This is
order synchronization system is thus given by due to the effects of two poles of a second-order system and
kr s2 + ki s three poles of a third-order system are almost similar. This
GV 0 (s) = section is thus dedicated to investigate the performance of a
s3 + a1 s2 + (ω 2 + ki )s + (a1 − kr )ω 2
second-order system under harmonic conditions.
(kr s + ki )ω Assuming the input voltage signal has voltage magnitude V
GQV 0 (s) = (9)
s + a1 s + (ω 2 + ki )s + (a1 − kr )ω 2
3 2
at the fundamental frequency ω, and has the harmonic voltage
Fig. 3 shows the Bode plots of two transfer functions in Vh at the harmonic frequency ωh ,
(9) with kr = 20, ki = 22214.41, a1 = 444.29. The system
vin (t) = V sin(ωt) + Vh sin(ωh t) (12)
is stable at pole locations s1 = −402.42, s2,3 = −20.94 ±
j321.90 and is able to synchronize at the central frequency ω. Note that the transfer function of a sinusoidal signal,
The output signals are always orthogonal because the phase i.e. u(t) = A sin(ω0 t), in the Laplace-domain is: U (s) =
difference is 90◦ or the outputs are sine and cosine at the Aω0 /(s2 + ω02 ). The output signal v 0 (t) of the SOGI corre-
steady-state. sponding to the input signal vin (t) from (12) can be supper-
imposed from the fundamental and harmonic frequencies.
At the fundamental frequency ω, the output component is
Bode plots of generalized third-order system given by
50
GV' (s)
ks ωs Vω
GQV' (s) V1 (s) = × 2 (13)
Magnitude (dB)

0 s2 + ks ωs + ω 2 s + ω2
The output voltage in (13) can be expressed in the time
-50 domain,
1
√ 2 ks ω

-100
e(− 2 ks −4ω− 2 )t
180 v1 (t) = V sin(ωt) + V p
ks2 − 4
1
√ ks ω
Phase (deg)

2
0 e( 2 ks −4ω− 2 )t
− V p (14)
ks2 − 4
-180
At the harmonic frequency ωh , the output component is
-360 given by
100 101 102 103
Frequency (Hz) ks ωs Vh ωh
Vh (s) = × 2 (15)
s2 + ks ωs + ω 2 s + ωh2
Fig. 3. Bode plots of third-order synchronization system.
The output voltage in (15) can be expressed in the time
The transfer functions in (9) can be simplified for some domain after some manipulations
interesting cases: 1) kr = 0 and 2) ki = 0. These two cases   p
can lead to the third-order SOGI-based configurations which vh (t) = Vh ks ωωh 2 ks2 − 4ω 2 cos ωh t
are studied in the literature [10], [11]. 1
√ 2 ks ω 1
√ 2 ks ω
+ ks ω 2 [e(− 2 ks −4ω− 2 )t − e( 2 ks −4ω− 2 )t ]
Case 1: kr = 0 and the output transfer functions GV 0 (s) p √ ks ω
√ ks ω
1 2 1 2
and GQV 0 (s) are simplified as − ks2 − 4ω 2 [e(− 2 ks −4ω− 2 )t + e( 2 ks −4ω− 2 )t ]
1
√ 2 ks ω 1
√ 2 ks ω
ki s + ks ωh2 [e(− 2 ks −4ω− 2 )t − e( 2 ks −4ω− 2 )t ]
GV 0 (s) = p √ √
s3 + a1 + (ω 2 + ki )s + a1 ω 2
s2 −
1 2 ks ω 1 2 ks ω
ks2 − 4ωh2 [e(− 2 ks −4ω− 2 )t + e( 2 ks −4ω− 2 )t ]
ki ω p p 
GQV 0 (s) = (10) + 2ks ks2 − 4ωωh sin(ωh t)2 ks2 − 4ωh2 sin(ωh t)
s3 + a1 s2 + (ω 2 + ki )s + a1 ω 2
 p 
Case 2: ki = 0 and the output transfer functions GV 0 (s) / 2 ks2 − 4(ω 4 + (ks2 − 2)ω 2 ωh2 + ωh4 ) (16)
and GQV 0 (s) become
The output signal v 0 (t) of the SOGI is the summation of
kr s2 v1 (t) from (14) and vh (t) from (16): v 0 (t) = v1 (t) + vh (t).
GV 0 (s) =
s3 + a1 s2 + ω 2 s + (a1 − kr )ω 2 It is worthwhile to mention that the two exponential terms
kr ωs in (14) will die out quickly and thus the output v1 (t) can
GQV 0 (s) = (11)
s3 + a1 s2 + ω 2 s + (a1 − kr )ω 2 reach the fundamental signal V sin(ωt) after a short duration.
The output vh (t) corresponding to the harmonic signal, as
III. T HE SOGI FOR H ARMONIC ATTENUATION expressed in (16), is depending on the value of gain ks , and
It has been shown in the literature that the third-order syn- this dependency is investigated by numerical method.
chronization system has excellent performance to identify the Note pthat the SOGI system in (5) has two poles at p1,2 =
grid information when the grid is polluted or unbalanced [10]– ω(ks ± ks2 − 4)/2. These two poles determines the response
[12]. However, to our belief if a second-order synchronization time ts for the system to accurately detect the input signal. If

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 200
these two poles are close to the origin, the response time is
long. If the poles are far from the origin, the response time 150

is short but the system will experience high overshoots. The 100

response time is depending on ks and is calculated as: ts = 50

3.0/(ωks /2) for 5% steady-state error [16]. The dependence 0

of the response time and the harmonic rms value, normalized -50
in terms of Vh in (16), on the value of gain ks is plot in Fig. 4.
-100
This figure shows an interesting impact of ks . As ks increases,
-150
the response time reduces significantly or the SOGI system
-200
response faster. However, the output harmonic rms increases 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25
Time (sec)
toward 1.0 per unit in this case. This means there is a trade-off
(a)
between the response time and the harmonic attenuation in the 200
SOGI system. The bottom plot in Fig. 4 shows a zoom-in of
150
the response time and harmonic rms value when ks is in range
100
of 0.1 and 0.4. The value of ks in this range can justify the
50
requirements from both the response time and the harmonic
attenuation. The simulation results below will show the impact 0

of ks on the SOGI performance. -50

-100
Time (s) and rms (pu)

1.5
1.25 Response time -150
Harmonic rms
1
-200
0.75 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25
0.5 Time (sec)
0.25
0 (b)
0 10 20 30 40 50
ks Fig. 5. a) The second-order system performance and b) the third-order system
Time (s) and rms (pu)

0.2 performance.
Response time
0.15 Harmonic rms

0.1

0.05
0
0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3
ks
Fig. 4. Response time and harmonic rms value versus ks .
IV. S IMULATION AND E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
The generalized second-order and third-order systems are
modeled and simulated in MATLAB/SIMULINK to verify
their synchronization capability. The detailed comparisons for
these two systems under different grid conditions can be found
in [15]. In this paper, only the performance under distorted grid
is presented to prove that the second-order system can give
similar performance as the third-order system if the poles are
carefully designed.
A. SOGI design with harmonic attenuation capability
In this case, the input signal has third-order and fifth-order
harmonics as in (17) with zero phase angles.
√ √
vin (t) = 120 2 sin(2π × 60 × t) + 20 2 sin(2π × 180 × t)
√
+ 5 2 sin(2π × 300 × t) (17)
The gain ks for the second-order system is set to 0.274 as
the intersection between two curves in Fig. 4. As can be
seen from Fig. 5a and Fig. 5b, the two outputs are clean
and sinusoidal. More importantly, the second-order system
can reject harmonics and thus identify the grid information
properly as the third-order system. It is worthwhile to mention
that the second-order system has faster response compared to
the third-order system.
B. The experimental results
0.35 0.4
This section presents the experimental results to verify the
theoretical analysis. The experiment setup is shown in Fig. 6.
In this setup, the grid voltage vin (t) is simulated in a Real-
time Digital Simulator (RTDS). We assume that vin (t) has the
maximum level of ±250V . In order to have the measurement
signal compatible with the ADC input of the microcontroller
(0-3V), we shifted the measurement by +250V and scaled
it down inside RTDS with the ratio of 3/500 to the voltage
level of 0-3V. The final measurement was finally sent to
the Texas Instruments launchpad F28377S, which performs
the grid synchronization techniques. The calculated v 0 (t) and
qv 0 (t) are fed through the Digital to Analog (DAC) processing
of the launchpad for the acquired data in the Oscilloscope. In
this experiment setup, the T rigger signal is used to start the
synchronization in the controller and the Oscilloscope.
The experiments are set up similar to the case in the previ-
ous simulation section. The results in Fig. 7 are corresponding
those in Fig. 5. The experimental results match perfectly
with the simulation results in terms of transient and steady-
state performance, and thus confirm the performance of the
proposed generalized second-order and third-order systems. It
is also clear that the second-order system is able to completely
remove the harmonics if it is carefully designed.
V. C ONCLUSION
In summary, this paper presents the research on the perfor-
mance of the second-order and the third-order grid synchro-
nization systems. The generalized forms of the second-order
and third-order systems that are based on the transfer function

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 approach are compared in terms of harmonic injection. The
Oscilloscope Real-time Simulator results confirm that the proposed second-order and third-order
systems can be used for synchronization under normal and
distorted grid conditions. It is worthwhile to reiterate that the
second-order system can have similar performance as the third-
order system if it is designed properly. More importantly, the
second-order system has faster response in terms of harmonic
injection compared to the third-order system.

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