2019 the 7th International Conference on Smart Energy Grid Engineering
Single-Phase Shunt Active Power Filter Using Parabolic PWM for Current Control
Abul Hasan Fahad
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
United International University
Dhaka, Bangladesh
e-mail: abulhasanfahad@ieee.org
Abstract—Shunt active power filter (SAPF) is the best solution
to minimize the problem of harmonics in the power systems,
but its effectiveness is strictly dependent on how quickly and
accurately its control algorithms can perform. In this paper,
parabolic carrier-based pulse-width modulation (PWM)
method is applied for current control in a voltage-source
converter (VSC) based single phase Shunt Active Power Filter.
This technique employs a pair of parabolic PWM carriers (a
positive one and a negative one) to determine the switching
states of the two switches in a converter phase leg while
limiting the current tracking error within nonlinear parabolic
band. In addition, PI controller with self-charging technique to
regulate the dc-bus voltage of the SAPF. The proposed single
phase SAPF can compensate harmonic currents and improve
power factor. In this paper, the design concept of the proposed
SAPF is verified through Matlab-Simulink simulation study
and the results obtained are discussed.
Keywords-shunt active power filter; parabolic PWM; current
controller; harmonics mitigation; power quality; power factor
improvement
I. INTRODUCTION
Harmonics are generated in power systems due to non-
sinusoidal current drawn by nonlinear loads through
switching action of onboard power conversion circuits.
Harmonics then propagate in the distribution network and
give rise to multitude of power quality problems [1]. To
suppress harmonics, typical solution is to employ
conventional passive (L-C) filters. Although these filters are
simpler and require no additional dc energy supply, they
suffer from major drawbacks such as, having fixed
compensation characteristics, large physical size and risk of
resonance [1]. These problems can be easily overcome by
Active Power Filter (APF) which are based on power
electronic converter and efficient switching controllers. They
are superior to conventional passive filters because of their
fast dynamic response, real-time characteristic, and
controllability. In addition, APFs can provide reactive power
(VAR) compensation and improve input power factor. In
literature, APFs have been classified in many ways such as,
converter-based classification (current source converter or
voltage source converter based), topology-based (series,
parallel and hybrid configuration) and supply-system based
(single phase two-wire, three phase three wire, three phase
four wire) [2]. Among all of these configurations, Single-
phase Shunt Active Power Filter (SAPF) finds many
978-1-7281-2440-7/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
Md. Shamim Reza
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
Dhaka, Bangladesh
e-mail: shamim_reza@eee.buet.ac.bd
applications in power distribution system and is connected at
the point between the voltage supply and a harmonic-
producing load. A Voltage Source Converter-based SAPF
typically consists of two main sections, a two-level or multi-
level voltage source inverter (power section) and controller
(control section). In the control section, there are three main
controllers: 1) DC-bus voltage regulator, (2) Reference
Current Generation block, and (3) current controller and gate
signal generation [3]-[8]. DC-bus voltage regulator is usually
a PI controller and it maintains the capacitor voltage within
desired range. Reference current generator block computes
the harmonics part of the load current and generates the
reference current needed to be injected for desired harmonic
compensation. The inverter injects the actual current into the
power system and its switching is controlled by the current
controller block. The current controller of SAPF ensures
proper switching of inverter's switches so that the actual
injected current follows the desired reference current [7].
Common current controller is the fixed-band hysteresis
control technique which is very attractive due to simplicity
and excellent dynamic response; but a well-known drawback
is the switching frequency variation. This increases the
switching losses and difficulty in designing the output filter
and to overcome these shortcomings, parabolic pulse width
modulation (PWM) technique can be used [9]. According to
literature review, this method can regulate the current
tracking error with fast dynamic response and ensures
constant switching frequency. So far, the SAPF design using
parabolic PWM current control has not been reported in
literature. Hence, opportunities exist to design such filter for
harmonics mitigation and power factor improvement. In this
work, a single phase SAPF has been designed in Matlab-
Simulink environment to mitigate harmonics in a power
system. Section II of this paper describes the details of
designing each part of the SAPF and Section III discusses
the simulation results.
II. SHUNT ACTIVE POWER FILTER USING PCC
A. System Configuration
The proposed SAPF in this paper is for single phase
systems. Fig. 1 shows the circuit configuration and Fig. 2
shows the control systems configuration of the filter. The
SAPF is placed parallel to the non-linear load. A half-bridge
voltage source inverter is employed with two neutral-
clamped capacitors as DC-bus. The inverter will inject the
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compensation current in the power system through an R-L
branch. Load current sensor and PCC voltage will be sensed
and fed to the controller section along with the voltages from Vdc, ref X To
+ reference
two DC-bus capacitors. Output of one controller is fed to PI
Vdc,1 + X current
another. Hence, it is understood that the system can be + -
controller
generator
unstable if any one of the controller becomes unstable. + X block
-
Vdc,2
Source Load Load Current
Current Current Sensor Figure 3. DC-bus voltage regulator.
AC SAPF Non-
Supply Current linear
PCC Voltage Sensor
load C. Reference Current Calculation
Vdc,1
+
DC-bus Using Fourier series expansion, current drawn by a non-
T1
L
R
- Capacitor
1
linear load can be written as a sum of fundamental
component and harmonic components in the following way:


I
Output T2 +
filter Vdc,2 DC-bus i Load (t) =IL,fund sin(ωfund t+θL,fund )+ L,n sin(nωfund t+θL,n ) (1)
- Capacitor
2 n=2
Shunt Active Power Filter where iLoad (t) is the dynamic load current, IL, fund and θL,fund
Figure 1. Power circuit of single-phase SAPF. is the magnitude and phase of fundamental sinusoidal
component and IL,n and θL,n is the magnitude and phase of n-
Gate Switching
Signals th harmonic present in the signal.
DC link
Reference
Voltage + PI Output from DC-Link
+ Controller
with self- Reference Current Gate
Voltage Regulator
Current Control Drive
DC link - charging
Generator Algorithm Circuit
Voltage
multiplier Integrator multiplier
Voltage at PCC Reference

Load Current Load

 dt
- Current

Current +
Reference Sine
Figure 2. Controller section of single-phase SAPF. Wave Load
Generator Current

B. Design of DC-Bus Capacitor Voltage Controller

Stability of DC-bus capacitor voltage is essential for Voltage
SAPF compensation performance. Ideally, the DC-bus at PCC

voltage should be kept constant. But during SAPF operation, Figure 4. Reference current generation scheme.
DC-bus voltage ripple is caused by several factors such as
the frequency of compensation current, effective value of The reference current generation scheme is adopted from
source voltage, DC voltage across the capacitor and so on [3]. the method described in [8]. Details of the computation
As a result, the ripple must be carefully controlled to ensure process is outlined in Fig. 4. There is a reference sine wave
SAPF stability. Typically, determination of value of value of generator block which takes voltage at PCC as input and
DC-bus capacitance is made considering to the range of gives output a reference sine waveform in phase with the
acceptable range of voltage ripple [4]. In addition, a input. So if our supply voltage is Vs sin(ωfundt), the reference
conventional PI- controller is used as a DC-bus voltage wave will be sin(ωfundt). Amplitude of this reference wave is
regulator. Choice of values for Kp and KI for this controller unity. This reference wave is multiplied to the load current
can be made based on an analysis of voltage controller loop iLoad and their product is integrated over a period Tsys of
dynamics [5], [6]. Careful Trial-and-error based approach system frequency. The mathematical expression can be
can also work. In this paper, self-charging PI controller has written as:
been applied. A detail description of this algorithms can be
Tsys
found in [7]. Reason of using self-charging based PI 1
controller instead of conventional PI controller is that this Iint = i Load  t  sin(ωt)dt =IL,fund cos  θL,fund  (2)
Tsys
controller works better in terms of accuracy. Fig. 3 illustrates 0

the details of DC-bus voltage controller, where Vdc,ref is the
reference voltage for DC-bus in volts, Vdc,1 and Vdc,2 are the
dynamic voltages of neutral-point clamped capacitors in
volts, C is the total capacitance of DC-bus in farads, Vs is the
amplitude of supply voltage in volts and T is the switching
time in seconds.
The output of DC-bus voltage regulator can be written as
IDC and is the current required to compensate for the losses
in power converter section. It is added to the output of the
integrator. The resultant signal is multiplied by the reference
sine wave signal and subtracted from the actual load current

135
to get the reference compensation current. The reference Here Cparabolic,+(t) is positive parabolic and Cparabolic, - (t) is
current can be expressed as below: the negative parabolic carrier, K is the carrier amplitude,
Tswitching is the period of switching frequency, Vdc,1 and Vdc,2
i REF (t) = i Load (t)-(Iint +I DC )sin(ωfund t)
are the dynamic voltages of neutral-point clamped DC-bus

(3) capacitors and L is the interface inductance. The
= IL,fund sin(ωfund t+θ L,fund )+ I
n=2
L,n sin(nωfund t+θ L,n )
implementation scheme is outlined in the Fig. 6.
 
- I L,fund cos θ L,fund +I DC sin(ωt)  
1/Tswitching
This reference current will be fed to the next block in 1/Tswitching 2
+ Positive
order to generate the actual injection current. parabolic
K  dt
 dt
- Carrier
D. Development of Current Controller and Gate Switching Reset Signal Edge

Signal Generation Detector

Actual Comparator 1
A simplified schematic of parabolic current controller Injection Current +
Gate
and grid interface circuit is presented in Fig. 5. Current SET

Error -
S Q Signal
+ Δi T1
CLR
R Q
Actual Reference
Injection + Gate
Vdc,1 Grid Injection -
Current Signal
- Interface Curent
Actual T2
T1 Injection -1
+ Current L
Current +
error R
Reference
Injection - PCC Negative -
Curent parabolic Comparator 2
T2
Grid Carrier
+
Vdc,2 Figure 6. Implementation of the parabolic PWM current controller.
-

E. Final Design
Figure 5. Simplified schematic of VSC with parabolic CC.
The final design of proposed SAPF is given in Fig. 7.
Here, instantaneous current error is fed to a Parabolic Here, a full-wave rectifier with a smoothing capacitor feeds
PWM-based current controller (PCC) block. Output of this DC output to a resistive load. The SAPF is placed in parallel
block is a gate switching signal which is fed to gates of to the load. Switching frequency has been selected as 10
power electronic switch T1 and through a NOT gate in T2. KHz. To suppress the switching harmonics propagate in the
This means when T1 is ON, T2 is OFF and vice versa. T1 system, RC output filter is used.
and T2 inject or absorb current from the DC-bus Capacitors
Full-Wave Rectifier
Vdc,1 and Vdc,2 into the grid through a R-L branch which Smoothing with filter capacitor

can be termed as grid interface circuit. The ac source Source

Current
Load
Current
Reactor
2 mH

indicates the grid or power system. A detailed operation

3300 µF

100Ω
220 V,
principle of Parabolic PWM current control is given in [9]. 50 Hz
In this controller, two parabolic carriers are generated- one SAPF
positive and the other is negative. The current error between Reference
Voltage output
Current
T1
+ DC-bus
Capacitor 1
reference current signal and actual current is compared to Actual
+ self-charging 4 mH
-
4000 µF
Voltage - PI controller
both carriers at the same time. If the error increases in the 1Ω 1Ω

positive direction and collides with the positive parabolic Load Current Reference
T2
carrier, in Fig. 5, switch T1 will be turned OFF and switch T1 T2 1Ω
& Current +
DC-bus
PCC Voltage Generator
Capacitor 2
T2 will be turned ON. As a result of this switching action, Reference
Current
1000 µF
-
4000 µF

current error will decrease in the negative direction and when SAPF
+
Current -
it collides with the negative parabolic carrier, switch T1 will Parabolic Gate Drive
be turned ON and switch T2 will be turned OFF. In this way, Current
Controller
Signal
Generator
PCC method has similarity with hysteresis-band current
Figure 7. Implementation of the parabolic PWM current controller.
control method. Mathematical expressions of the positive
parabolic carrier and negative parabolic carrier are given
below: III. SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
  
2

C parabolic,+ (t)=K 
1
-
1
  ,0  t  Tswitching (4)
A. Non-linear Load Characteristic
 Tswitching  Tswitching  
    Fig. 8 describes the plot of voltage and current of the
resistive load connected between the output terminals of the
K=

Tswithcing Vdc,1 -Vdc,2  (5) full-wave rectifier. Load voltage has an average of 295 Volts
2L with a ripple of 8 volts. The load current is around 2.9 Amps
with a ripple of 0.3 Amps (Total Output Power ~900 Watts).
C parabolic,- (t)= - C parabolic,+ (t) (6)

136
Reason of less ripple in the voltage is due the smoothing
capacitor of 3300 µF.

Harmonic Number

Figure 10. FFT analysis of load current.

Figure 8. Load voltage and load current.

Fig. 9 presents the rectifier input voltage and rectifier

input current. The voltage is sinusoidal, but the current is
non-sinusoidal as typical full-wave rectifier with output filter
capacitor characteristic.
Fig. 10 describes the FFT analysis of the rectifier input
current. The sampling frequency of the system is set to be
200 KHz (Sampling time = 5 µS). THD of rectifier input
current has been calculated using the powergui fft analysis
tool of Simulink. Calculated THD is 105.49% which is Figure 11. Volatges of DC-bus capacitors.
clearly unacceptable and needs to be reduced within limit.
B. DC-Bus Voltage Regulation Performance C. Current Controller Performance
A reference voltage of 800 volts was set for the DC-bus This section discusses the simulation results of current
voltage controller. Both positive and negative DC-bus controller and gate signal generator section. As evident from
capacitors were initially charged with 800 volts. Fig. 11 Fig. 12, current error is always contained within the positive
shows that the total voltage of the capacitors are approaching and negative parabolic carriers.
800 V with time. Hence the voltage regulator is working
satisfactorily.

Figure 12. Performance of parabolic current control.

Finally, from Fig. 14 it can be seen that SAPF correctly

injects the reference current in the system, but the current has
higher frequency switching current. The final SAPF output
Figure 9. Load voltage and load current. current is the current after being filtered by the output RC
filter.

137
D. Overall System Performance
Fig. 15 shows the plot of key system variables i.e. Mains
voltage, Mains current, SAPF current and Load Current. It
can be seen that the mains current is sinusoidal with very
little harmonic content. FFT analysis of mains current is
given in Fig. 16 which shows THD of 5.46 %. It proves the
harmonics in this system is suppressed to an acceptable
extent.
Figure 13. Comparison among reference current, SAPF injection current
and output current.
Figure 14. Key system variables.
Harmonic Number
Figure 15. FFT analysis of mains current.
138
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, Parabolic Carrier-based PWM control was
successfully applied in the design and simulation of a single-
phase shunt active power filter. It was shown that the
proposed shunt active filter can adequately compensate for
harmonic currents produced by the non-linear load. Self-
charging capability in a PI controller was also successfully
implemented into the proposed SAPF to regulate the dc
capacitor voltages. However, the proposed design still needs
to be validated by experimental results. This design, analysis
and simulation results serve as a basis toward the practical
hardware implementation of the shunt active filter in the
future.
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