IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO.

2, APRIL 2005 1453

New Controller for Single-Phase PWM Converter

Without AC Source Voltage Sensor
B. Han, Senior Member, IEEE, S. Baek, and H. Kim

Abstract—In this paper, a new controller for single-phase PWM

converter without the ac voltage sensor is described. The proposed
controller requires only the dc voltage sensor and the ac current
sensor to compensate the power factor and harmonics. Detail
simulation model including power circuit and controller was
developed to verify the operation of proposed controller. The ap-
plication feasibility of the proposed controller was verified through
experimental works with a prototype. The proposed controller
has a simple structure in the point of hardware implementation,
and shows excellent performance in normal operation as well as
in sudden load change.
Index Terms—Fast Fourier transform (FFT), operational am-
plifier (OP), power factor correction, proportional integral (PI)
control, single-phase PWM converter, total harmonic distortion
(THD).
Fig. 1. Single-phase PWM converter.

I. INTRODUCTION

S WITCHING-MODE power supply has been come into

wide use to supply the dc power for the electronic equip-
ment in the industry and the office. It has a diode bridge with
a dc filter capacitor to convert the ac power into the dc power.
The filter capacitor causes the input ac current to have pulse
shape, which brings about the low power factor and the high
level of harmonic distortion.
One method to mitigate these defects is inserting a step-up
chopper between the diode bridge and the filter capacitor [1].
When the step-up chopper is inserted, the switching frequency
should be raised to reduce the dc voltage ripple and to minia-
turize the system size. But higher switching frequency causes
higher switching losses and lower system efficiency. Also, ad-
ditional semiconductor elements and passive network elements
are needed, which causes the voltage drop in the dc side and the
additional system losses.
In order to improve these defects, a single-phase PWM
converter was proposed, which consists of two semiconductor
switches with back-connected diodes and two diodes [2],
[3]. Compared with the diode rectifier including the step-up
chopper, the PWM converter can save three diodes and requires
one additional semiconductor switch with back-connected
diode.
The PWM converter needs three input sensors to measure
the ac voltage, the ac current, and the dc voltage for compen-
Manuscript received February 3, 2003; revised May 1, 2003. This work was
supported by the Next-Generation Power Technology Center, Myongji Univer-
sity, Korea. Paper no. TPWRD-00045-2003.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Myongji Uni-
versity, Kyunggi-do 449-728, Korea (e-mail: erichan@mju.ac.kr).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRD.2004.839212
0885-8977/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
sating the power factor and the harmonics [4]–[6]. However,
the ac voltage can be estimated using the values measured by
the other two sensors. Several papers already proposed the con-
trol schemes for three-phase PWM converter without ac source
voltage sensor, not for single-phase PWM converter [7]–[9].
This paper proposes a new controller for single-phase PWM
converter without ac source voltage sensor. The performance of
proposed controller is analyzed using theoretical approach and
simulation model. And the feasibility of practical application is
verified by means of building and testing a prototype of single-
phase PWM converter with proposed controller.
II. PWM CONVERTER
A single-phase PWM converter has a configuration of power
circuit shown in Fig. 1, which is same as that described in
[2]–[4]. The power circuit consists of two diodes and two semi-
conductor switches with back-connected diodes, which replace
two diodes on the left part of the full-bridge diode rectifier with
two semiconductor switches including back-connected diodes.
The reactor is inserted in the ac input to reduce the har-
monic distortion of input ac current due to switching opera-
tion. Switches and are operates in PWM scheme. And
diodes and are conventional ones used in the normal
diode rectifier.
PWM converter has the following advantages, which pro-
mote many researchers to perform an active research and
development.
• Power factor can be improved and almost sinusoidal ac
current can be obtained at the input terminal.
1454 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005

TABLE I
OPERATION MODE TO SWITCH STATE

• The current flowing through switches and has lower

rating. So, the size and power rating of semiconductor el-
ements can be reduced.
There are four operation modes in the single-phase PWM
converter (Fig. 2). The switch states in accordance with the op-
eration modes are shown in Table I. Mode 1 and Mode 2 are
repeated, when the input voltage is in the positive half pe-
riod. Mode 3 and Mode 4 are repeated, when the input voltage
is in the negative half period.

A. Mode 1: Free-Wheeling Mode Through and

When the input voltage is in the positive half period, switch
turns off and switch turns on. The current flows through
switch and diode . The current through inductor in-
creases and magnetic energy stored in it. Capacitor initially
charged with the voltage of starts to discharge for sup-
plying the load current. The circuit equation in this mode can
be represented as the following:

(1)

where and are the input voltage and the input current,
respectively.

B. Mode 2: Power-Supplying Mode Through and

When switch turns off, back-connected diode turns
on. The current flows through back-connected diode and
diode . The power is transferred to capacitor and the
load. The circuit equation can be represented as the following:

(2)

C. Mode 3: Free-Wheeling Mode Through and

When the input voltage in the negative half period, switch
turns on and switch turns off. The current flows through
switch and diode . The current through inductor in-
Fig. 2. Operation mode to switch state. (a) Mode 1. (b) Mode 2. (c) Mode 3.
(d) Mode 4. creases and magnetic energy is stored in it. Capacitor sup-
plies the load current. The circuit equation in this mode can be
represented as the following:
• Two semiconductor elements are involved in current flow
at any instant. So, the voltage drop can be reduced com-
pared with the step-up chopper compensation. (3)
HAN et al.: NEW CONTROLLER FOR SINGLE-PHASE PWM CONVERTER WITHOUT AC SOURCE VOLTAGE SENSOR 1455

Fig. 3. Controller with three input sensors.

Fig. 4. Proposed controller with two input sensors.

D. Mode 4: Power-Supplying Mode Through and
When switch turns off, back-connected diode turns The proposed controller can compensates the voltage drop
on. The current flows through back-connected diode and across the inductor and the dead time of converter switches to
diode . The power is transferred to capacitor and the improve the system performance.
load. The circuit equation can be represented as the following: According to Kirchhoff’s voltage law for the power circuit,
(5) can be obtained
(4)
(5)
The PWM converter can compensate the power factor and the
harmonic distortion at the same time, while maintaining the dc The estimated source voltage is obtained adding the
voltage constant [5], [6]. The performance of PWM converter is voltage drop across inductor to the estimated converter voltage
critically dependant on the performance of controller. Normally and then passing through the band-pass filter
the controller requires three input sensors to measure the input The magnitude of reference input current is determined
voltage, the input current, and the dc voltage as shown in Fig. 3. by comparison of the measured capacitor voltage with the
The function of the controller is to generate a PWM pulses reference capacitor voltage , while the phase of it is syn-
so that the input current can track the reference value . chronized with the estimated source voltage
The dc voltage is measured and compared with the refer-
ence voltage . Its error is passed through the gain ampli- (6)
fier and multiplied by the synchronized sinusoidal component
of , which is extracted from the input voltage measured
The estimated converter voltage is obtained comparing the
by the potential transformer. The result produces the reference
measured input current with the reference input current
input current , which is compared with the measured value
and then passing through the PI control
and passed through the PI control to generate the reference
signal . The reference is compared with the tri-
angular carrier to generate the PWM pulses. (7)

In order to make the input current sinusoidal, the dc voltage

III. PROPOSED CONTROLLER
Fig. 4 shows a proposed controller, which has two input sen-
sors for the ac current and the dc voltage. These two sensors are
needed to protect the system from the over-voltage and the over-
current, while the ac voltage sensor has no restriction. Also, the
ac voltage can be easily estimated from the measured values
from the ac current and the dc voltage sensors.
This estimation increases the complexity of the proposed con-
troller. But this complexity does not increase the system cost,
because the OP amplifier, small resistor, and capacitor are very
cheep, compared with the potential transformer. What is more,
the potential transformer has a large size compared with the
controller, which composed of the OP amplifiers and passive
components.
can be controlled separately according to the polarity of the
estimated input voltage . The polarity of estimated input ac
voltage is detected and multiplied by the dc voltage to reduce
the control burden of . The voltage component of in the
controller indicates this compensation, which is added to the es-
timated converter voltage .
When the proposed controller is applied for the actual hard-
ware, the dead time in PWM operation affects the esti-
mation of input voltage. Fig. 5 shows how the voltage error is
occurred during the dead time. The converter voltage during
the dead time is determined depending on the polarity of as
shown in (8)
(8)
1456 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 20, NO. 2, APRIL 2005

Fig. 5. Error voltage during dead time.

TABLE II
SIMULATION PARAMETERS

Fig. 6. Simulation result of input voltage and current. (a) Sudden control start.
The voltage error during the dead time becomes a pulse (b) Step load decrease (80
→ 120
). (c) Step load increase (120
→ 80
).
whose height and width are and , respectively. Two
pulses are generated at each period of the triangular carrier. The
average value of error voltage can be represented by a square
wave. Its magnitude is determined by (9), where is the fre-
quency of triangular carrier

(9)

This voltage component of is added to the estimated

converter voltage .

IV. SIMULATION ANALYSIS

Many computer simulations have been done to verify the
operation of the proposed controller and the performance of
whole system. EMTDC (Electro-Magnetic Transient analysis
for high-voltage dc transmission) software was used for the sim-
ulation. The circuit parameters used in simulations is shown in
Table II.
The voltage across inductor is calculated using the differential
circuit. So, the estimated input voltage has switching noises,
which can be removed through LPF (low-pass filter) or BPF
(band-pass filter). In this study BPF was used for this purpose,
which has the cut-off frequency of 60 Hz, the -factor of 1.0,
and the gain of 1.0.
Fig. 6 shows the waveforms of input voltage and current ob- Fig. 7. Circuit diagram for hardware prototype.
tained from the simulation. Fig. 6(a) shows the input current
variation when the control starts to operate, in which the voltage current is almost sinusoidal, even though some amount of dis-
was displayed together for checking the power factor. The input tortions exists. Its power factor is almost 1.0. Fig. 6(b) shows the
HAN et al.: NEW CONTROLLER FOR SINGLE-PHASE PWM CONVERTER WITHOUT AC SOURCE VOLTAGE SENSOR 1457

Fig. 9. FFT analysis result of input current. (a) PWM converter without
control. (b) PWM converter with proposed control.

transients. Fig. 6(c) shows the input current variation when the
load has a step increase from 120 to 80 . The input current
increases rapidly without large transients. Therefore, the pro-
posed controller operates properly in sudden load changes.

V. HARDWARE EXPERIMENT
A hardware prototype including the power circuit and the
control circuit was built and tested to confirm the feasibility of
practical implementation. For the purpose of easy comparison,
the circuit parameters used in the hardware prototype are exactly
same as those in the simulation. The circuit diagram is shown
in Fig. 7, in which the control was implemented using the linear
operational amplifiers. The control circuit is designed consid-
ering easy modularization according to their function.
Fig. 8 shows the waveforms of input current and voltage mea-
sured through experiment. Fig. 8(a) shows the input current vari-
ation when the control starts to operate. The input current is al-
most sinusoidal and its power factor is almost 1.0, as expected
Fig. 8. Experimental result of input voltage and current. (a) Sudden control
start. (b) Step load decrease (80
→ 120
). (c) Step load increase (120
→ from the simulation result. Fig. 8(b) shows the input current
80
). variation when the load has a step decrease from 80 to 120 .
The input current decreases rapidly without large transients as
input current variation when the load has a step decrease from expected from the simulation result. Fig. 8(c) shows the input
80 to 120 . The input current decreases rapidly without large current variation when the load has a step increase from 120
1458
to 80 . The input current increases rapidly without large tran-
sients as expected from the simulation result.
Fig. 9 shows two waveforms of the input current measured be-
fore and after the proposed controller operates. Fig. 9(a) shows
the measured input current and its FFT analysis result before
the controller starts to operate. The input current contains quite
high level of 3rd and 5th harmonics. The total harmonic dis-
tortion of the input current is more than 47%. Fig. 9(b) shows
the measured input current and its FFT analysis result after the
controller starts to operate. The input current contains extremely
low level of third and fifth harmonics. The total harmonic distor-
tion (THD) is about 5.3%, which is 0.2% higher than the value
measured from the PWM converter with three input sensors [6].
It is realized that the PWM converter with proposed controller
has extremely high performance to improve the power factor
and the harmonic level.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new controller for the single-phase PWM con-
verter without ac source voltage sensor is proposed. The pro-
posed controller requires only the dc voltage and the ac current
sensors to compensate the power factor and harmonics. Detail
simulation model including power circuit and controller was de-
veloped to verify the operation of proposed controller. The fea-
sibility of hardware implementation for the proposed controller
was verified through experimental works with a prototype.
The proposed controller has a simple structure in the point
of hardware implementation, and has only two input sensors,
which offers lower cost and smaller size. The proposed PWM
converter shows excellent performance in normal operation, as
well as in sudden load changes.
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B. Han (S’91–M’92–SM’00) received the B.S.
degree in electrical engineering from Seoul National
University, Seoul, Korea, in 1976, and the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees from Arizona State University,
Tempe, in 1988 and 1992, respectively.
He was a Senior Research Engineer with the
Science and Technology Center, Westinghouse
Electric Corporation. Currently, he is a Professor in
the Department of Electrical Engineering, Myongji
University, Kyunggi-do, Korea. His research inter-
ests include the high-power power electronics and
FACTS.
S. Baek received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in
electrical engineering from the Myongji University,
Kyunggi-do, Korea, in 1997 and 1999, respectively.
He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at Myongji
University.
His research interests include power electronics
application for FACTS and custom power.
H. Kim received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in
electrical engineering from Myongji University,
Kyunggi-do, Korea, in 1997 and 1999, respectively.
He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at Myongji
University.
His research interests include power electronics
application for FACTS and custom power.