FIVE-LEVEL T-TYPE NPC PFC RECTIFIER BASED ON MULTISTATE

SWITCHING CELL

José A. L. Barboza Jr.1, Olympio C. S. Filho1, Luan C. S. Mazza1, René P. T. Bascopé1

1
Federal University of Ceara, Fortaleza – Ceará, Brazil
e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract – This paper presents a proof of concept of a studied in many works by [14], where the experimental
new converter cell named T-type multistate switching cell results are very satisfactory. This paper presents
(TT-MSSC). The proposed cell was derived from the demonstration of obtaining procedure of T-type multi-state
three-phase current fed DC-DC Push-Pull converter with switching cell to obtain AC-DC and DC-AC converters. The
NPC output rectifier and can provide both AC-DC and cited cells allow: current sharing through the devices, adds
DC-AC conversions for single-phase, three-phase or the number of voltage levels between the neutral point and
multi-phase configurations. Based on the proposed cell, a the common point of the autotransformer which reduces
single-phase unidirectional converter is proposed which input filter inductor size, and symmetrical voltage division
provides the following features: power factor correction, across semiconductors is guaranteed.
current sharing through devices, symmetrical voltage
division across semiconductors, inductor current ripple II. T-TYPE MULTI-STATE SWITCHING CELL (TT-
with twice switching frequency, and five level voltage MSSC) GENERATION PROCEDURE
formation between ground point and common point of
the autotransformer. To verify the operation principle, a The T-type multi-states switching cell, it was found from
prototype with the input voltage Vi = 220 V (rms), output the three-phase current fed DC-DC Push-Pull converter
voltage Vo = 800 V, and output power Po = 1 kW was shown in Figure 1(a), which was studied in [11][12][13]. In
implemented and tested in laboratory. this topology, the DC voltage source was replaced by a
Keywords – Five-level, Multistate Switching Cell, alternating AC voltage source; the switches S1, S2 and S3
Neutral Point Clamped, Power Factor Correction, were replaced by bidirectional current switches, and the
Rectifier. three-phase full-bridge diode rectifier with center tap was
replaced by a three-phase neutral-point-clamped (NPC)
I. INTRODUCTION switching cell as rectifier, which is shown in Figure 1(b).
Subsequently, the three-phase transformer that provides
AC-DC converters, also known as rectifiers, are widely electrical insulation is replaced by a three-phase
used as pre-regulators to feed DC-DC converters, DC-AC autotransformer, as shown in Figure 1(c). Thus, the neutral
converters (inverters), and indirect AC-AC converters. point previously connected to the neutral point of the three-
Therefore, AC-DC conversion is largely used in UPS phase autotransformer is removed, and the same is connected
systems, electric machine driver systems, electric vehicle to the common point of the bidirectional switches S1, S2 and
battery charger systems, telecommunications battery charger S3, as shown in Figure 1(d). In the next step, the
systems, etc [1]-[5]. The AC-DC converters have usually the bidirectional switches S1, S2 and S3 are connected to the
following requirements: input power factor correction and neutral point of the circuit, as shown in Figure 1(e). Finally,
output voltage regulation. The low voltage commercial grids the T-type multistate switching cell (TT-MSSC) is found in
are usually configured as single-phase or three-phase systems Figure 1(e).
then, depending on the amount of phases, there are Figure 2 shows a generalized version of the proposed cell.
essentially single-phase and three-phase adapted topologies. With this cell, it is possible to generate multiphase AC-DC
The mentioned topologies have features of step-up and/or and DC-AC converters for industrial applications.
step-down relative to output voltage [6]-[8]. Due to the great In this paper, only the single-phase AC-DC converter
utility of AC-DC converters, efforts are underway by the version with power factor correction and unidirectional
scientific community of power electronics to increase energy flow is analyzed,
efficiency and power density, taking into account the
fundamental requirements indicated previously. For this III. SINGLE-PHASE FIVE LEVEL AC-DC CONVERTER
purpose, it is possible to use two techniques, which are, BASED ON TT-MSSC
direct parallelism of next-generation of semiconductors that
have low voltage drops in on-state, or parallelism of The Figure 3 shows the single-phase converter using the
switching cells based on next-generation semiconductors [9]- proposed cell. The use of the neutral point clamped diode
[10]. Between the two techniques, the first has the drawback reduce the requirements for reverse blocking voltage of the
of dynamic current distribution during semiconductors semiconductors devices. In addition, the NPC is a mature
switching, on the other hand, the latter does not present the topology widely used in the industry, which became a
aforementioned drawback. This second technique uses of standard for medium level voltage applications.
multi-state switching cell (MSSC), it has been proposed and

978-1-4799-8779-5/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

 S11 S21 S31

Sc1

Sc2
+ Vo1
Sc3
-
Three-Phase S12 S22 S32
Transformer

L
Np Ns
Three-Phase D11 D21 D31 n
Transformer Np
+ Ns
Vo1 Np Ns
-
L
Np Ns S13 S23 S33
+
Np Vi
Ns - Sc1´ + Vo2

Np Ns -
S1 S3 S2 Sc2´
+ +
Vi Vo2 Sc3´
- -
S1 S3 S2 D12 D22 D32 S14 S24 S34

(a) (b)
S11 S21 S31 S11 S21 S31

Sc1 Sc1

Sc2 Sc2
+ Vo1 + Vo1
Sc3 Sc3
- -
Three-Phase S12 S22 S32 Three-Phase S12 S22 S32
Autotransformer Autotransformer

L L
Np Np
n n

Np Np
Np Np

S13 S23 S33 S13 S23 S33

+ +
Vi Vi
- Sc1´ + Vo2 - Sc1´ + Vo2

- -
S1 S3 S2 Sc2´ S1 S3 S2 Sc2´

Sc3´ Sc3´
S14 S24 S34 S14 S24 S34

(c) (d)
S11 S21 S31

Sc1

Sc2
+ Vo1
Sc3
Three-Phase S12 S22 S32 -
Autotransformer
S1

L
Np n

S2
Np
Np
S3

S13 S23 S33

+
Vi
- Sc1´ + Vo2

Sc2´ -

Sc3´
S14 S24 S34

(e)
Fig. 1. T-type multi-state switching cell (TT-MSSC) generation procedure; (a) three-phase current fed DC-DC push-pull converter; (b)
three-phase current fed AC-DC converter with NPC cell; (c) previous converter with neutral connected to the autotransformer; (d) neutral
removed from the autotransformer and connected to the common point of the switches S1, S2 and S3.

978-1-4799-8779-5/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

 a
four switches Si1,Si2,Si3 and Si4 and two diodes Dni1 and
S11 S21 S31 Sj1
Dni2, where ‘i’ can designate ‘a’ or ‘b’ depending on the
Sc1 NPC leg.
Sc2 Figure 4 shows the unidirectional energy flow version of
Sc3
this converter. In this topology, diodes replaces the active
switches of each the NPC leg. With this topology, the
Multiphase Scj
S12 S22 S32 Sj2 converter operates as a rectifier supporting medium voltage.
Transformer
N S1

L
c N S2 n

N S3

N Sn

S13 S23 S33 Sj3

Sc1´

j=leg numbers Sc2´

Sc3´

Scj´
S14 S24 S34 Sj4

b Fig. 4. Unidirectional proposed topology.

Fig. 2. Proposed TT-MSSC topology.
This converter is current-commutated which implies that
The multi-state switching cell splits the total input/output the device to conduct is defined by the current flow direction.
current uniformly between semiconductors [17]. This For example, if the current is positive in the N1 turn (flows
reduces the conduction requirements of each element, which from the mains to the rectifier) it will flow through diodes
lowers costs related to the semiconductors and enable the use Da1, Da2 or switch Sv1. In such case, the voltage applied to
of the rectifier in high current applications. As several the point ‘a’ to the middle point of the DC bus ‘n’ will be
components share the current, the loss distribution is half of the DC bus or zero, respectively. In order to operate
improved. In addition, the magnet components demand is the rectifier in interleaved mode, each sub-converter is
minimized since the input current ripple frequency is twice commanded by a 180° phase shifted carrier. This leads to a
the switching frequency, reducing weight and volume. reduced total input current ripple due to the partial
Furthermore, the reduction of high frequency harmonics of cancelation of the ripple of the sub-converter input current.
the input current also reduces the capacitor current improving
its reliability due to lowered operation temperature. A. Operation stages
The operating stages of the unidirectional topology
a
presented in Figure 4 can be determined based on the
S11 S21
switching states of Sv1 and Sv2. There are four possible
+
operation stages for each input current semi-cycle. This
Single-phase S12 Sc1 S22 Sc2 -
Vo1 section will show the stages obtained when the rectifier
Transformer operates with positive input current.
N S1
L
c
n
S2

Sc2´
+ N S13 Sc1´ S23
S3
Vi
- +
Vo2
-
S14 S24

Fig. 3. Proposed single-phase bidirectional converter based on TT-

MSSC.

The proposed single-phase converter consists of an input

boost inductor L, an autotransformer with N1/N2 turn
relation, two NPC legs and two bidirectional switches
Fig. 5. Operating stage 1. Sv1 and Sv2 are off. Vxn = Vo/2.
connected to the midpoint of the DC bus. The converter
works as two sub-converter, each one connected to one NPC
leg and to one bidirectional switch. Each NPC leg consists of
 1) Stage 1: This stage occurs when switches Sv1 and Sv2 detailed model of the converter is necessary, but for a proof
are turned off. In this stage, the current splits equally among of concept, this rough approximation is enough.
the paths formed by diodes Da1-Da2 and Db1-Db2. In this
situation, the autotransformer is shortcut. The resulting
voltage Vxn is +Vo/2. The Figure 5 shows this stage.

2) Stage 2: Figure 6 shows the current flow in the

converter during this stage. Switch Sv1 is on while Sv2 is
off. The current flows through diodes Db1-Db2 and switch
Sv1. The winding voltage in the autotransformer is defined
so that the voltage drop among the path ‘xbnax’ is zero. The
resulting voltage Vxn is +Vo/4.

Fig. 8. Operating stage 4. Sv1 and Sv2 are on. Vxn = 0.

As the proposed rectifier is single-phase, the passive

elements calculated for a boost-type equivalent circuit can be
used in the proposed rectifier.

B. Control strategy
The control goals are to achieve the required voltage level
on the DC bus and guarantee operation with unit power
factor. To accomplish such requirements one need to control
the output voltage and the input current of the rectifier.
Fig. 6. Operating stage 2. Sv1 is on while Sv2 is off. Vxn = +Vo/4. A nested control loop strategy is designed so that both
requirements are achieved. The inner control loop controls
3) Stage 3: In this stage, the voltage Vxn is the same of the the inductor current of the converter while the outer loop
stage 2 but it is obtained while Sv1 is off and Sv2 is on. The controls the output voltage. The mean current control
current splits between the path formed by Sv2 and the path strategy is used. Figure 9 shows a block diagram showing the
formed by diodes Da1-Da2. Figure 7 shows this stage. control stages.

Fig. 9. Control block diagram.

To design the controllers Cvo(s) and CiL(s), a model of

the converter is needed. The transfer functions of the boost
converter were used and the design procedure to determine
Fig. 7. Operating stage 3. Sv1 is off while Sv2 is on. Vxn = +Vo/4. the controllers followed the specified in [18].

4) Stage 4: In this stage, switches Sv1 and Sv2 are turned IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
on what shortcuts the autotransformer resulting in zero
voltage in the windings. The current splits equally among This section presents the experimental results. Table I
switches Sv1 and Sv2. Figure 8 shows this stage. shows the specifications used in the prototype.

III. DESIGN TABLE I

Converter specifications
A. Equivalent circuit modeling Specitifcation Value
Switching frequency (fsw) 21 kHz
An overview analysis of Figure 4 allows one to say the
Grid frequency (fgr) 60 Hz
proposed converter behaves as a boost-type converter. A Nominal input voltage (Vgrid) 220V
Minimum input voltage (Vgrid_min) 187V
 Maximum input voltage (Vgrid_max) 253V Figure 11 reveals some zero
z cross distortion in the input
Hold-up time (Δt) 0.0167s current which result in the Tootal Harmonic Distortion (THD)
Estimated efficiency (η) 95% of 9.94%. See the detailed innput current harmonic content in
Output voltage (Vo) 800V
Load power (Po) 1 kW
Figure 13.
Inductor current ripple (ΔiL%) 20%
Output voltage ripple (ΔVo) 6%
Input inductance (L) 5.2 mH
Capacitor (C1 and C2) 2 unitss of 1000 uF in parallel
Load resistence (R1 and R2) 640 Ω

The Figure 10 shows the prototypee board. An analog

control board was also developed. This board makes use of
an isolated fly back based circuit driverr to trigger switches
Sv1 and Sv2.
Analog conntrol board Fig. 13. Harmonic content of thhe input current.
Inductor
The input current zero cross
c distortion will be reduced
with a detailed modelling off the plant to be controlled and
the use of improved modulatiion techniques.
The input five-level voltaage obtained through the use the
MSSC can be seen in Figure 14.

DC BUS

Driver
Autotransformeer
Fig. 10. Assembled prototype.

Figure 11 shows the grid voltage and a input current in

phase. The obtained Power Factor (PF F) was 0.994 at full
100V/div
load, which is next to the unity. Figure 12 shows the Power
4ms
Factor for different values of load. It can be observed that for
Fig. 14. Detail of the converter input voltage.
loads greater than 600W, the power factor is always bigger
than 0.99. Another important result of
o the control strategy is the DC
bus voltage, which is shownn in Figure 15. The voltages are
balanced and there is a paartial cancelation of the ripple
voltage of each capacitor.

Vc1 Vc2

100V/div
5A/div
4ms
Fig. 11. Detail of the mains voltage and curreent waveforms
10V/div
10V/div
4ms
Fig. 15. Detail of the capacitorss C1 and C2 voltages.

Figure 16 shows the reveerse voltage on the bidirectional

switch Sv1 and Sv2. It is alsoo clear that the reverse voltage is
also half of the DC total bus voltage. Similar behavior can be
observed for diodes Da1, Da22 and Dna1.
The efficiency obtained ata full load is 95.42%. However,
the highest efficiency was 96.50%
9 and it was obtained at
Fig. 12. Power factor for different load values. 80% of full load. The grapph of efficiency against output
power can be seen in Figure 17.
 [6] B. Singh, B. N. Singh, A. Chandra, K. Al-Haddad, A.
Pandey, and D. P. Kothhari, “A Review of Single-Phase
Improved Power Qualitty AC-DC Converters”, in IEEE
Transactions on Industtrial Electronics, vol. 50, no. 5,
pp. 962–981, October 2003.
2
[7] B. Singh, B. N. Singh, A. Chandra, K. Al-Haddad, A.
Pandey, and D. P. Kothhari, “A Review of Three-Phase
Improved Power Qualitty AC-DC Converters”, in IEEE
Transactions on Industtrial Electronics, vol. 51, no. 3,
250V/div
4ms pp. 641–660, June 20044.
Fig. 16. Reverse blocking voltage on bidirecctional power switches
[8] R. L. Andersen, and I. Barbi, “A Three-Phase Current-
Sv1/Sv2. Fed Push-Pull DC--DC Converter”, in IEEE
Transactions on Powerr Electronics, vol. 24, no. 2, pp.
358–368, June 2009.
[9] R. L. Andersen, and I. I Barbi, “A ZVS-PWM Three-
Phase Current-Fed Push-Pull DC-DC Converter”, in
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol. 60,
no. 3, pp. 838–847, Marrch 2013.
[10] S. Lee, J. Park, and S. Choi, “A Three-Phase Current-
Fed Push-Pull DC-DC Converter
C with Active Clamp for
Cell Applications”, in IEEE Transactions on Power
Electronics, vol. 26, no. 8, pp. 2266–2277, August
Fig. 17. Efficiency against output power. 2011.
[11] J. A. Ferreira Neto, F. J.
J B. Brito Jr, D. Joca, M. A. N.
V. CONCLUSIONS Nunes, and R.P. T. Bascopé, “A Five-Level NPC
Bidirectional Converterr Based on Multistate Switching
This paper describes a new PFC recttifier topology based Cell Operating as Boosst Rectifier”, in Brazilian Power
on the proposed TT-MSSC cell, whichh allows its use in Electronics Conference, COBEP´13, pp. 79–84, 2013.
medium voltage applications. The use off the MSSC reduces [12] D. G. Holmes, and T. A.A Lipo, Pulse Width Modulation
the semiconductors current requirementts, which results in for Power Converters-P Principles and Practice, A John
lower costs. Experimental results showeed that power factor Wiley & Sons, Inc., 20003.
correction was achieved for the proposedd converter as well as [13] G. V. T. Bascopé and I. I Barbi, “Generation of a family
the control of the DC bus voltage. of non-isolated DC–DC PWM converters using new
three-state switching ceells,” in Proc. 31th Annu. IEEE
REFERENCES Power Electron. Spec. Conf., PESC´2000, vol. 2, pp.
858–863, 2000.
[1] T. Soeiro, T. Friedli, and J. W. Kolar,
K “Three-Phase [14] M. T. Peraça and I. Baarbi, “The Generation of DC-DC
High Power Factor Mains Interrface Concepts for Converters Using New w Three-Terminal Multiple-State
Electric Vehicle Battery Charging Systems”, in IEEE Cells,” in Proc. 36th Annu. IEEE Power Electron.
27th Applied Power Electronics Conference and Special. Conf., PESC´20005, pp. 2657–2663, 2005.
Exposition, APEC´12, pp. 2603–26610, 2012. [15] R. P. T. Bascopé, L. F.F Costa, and G. V. T. Bascopé,
[2] F. Blaabjerg, M. Liserre, and K. Ma, “Power “Generation of New Nonisolated
N High Voltage Gain
Electronics Converters for Wind Turbine
T Systems”, in DC-DC Converters”, inn Proc. IEEE 33th Intern. Telec.
IEEE Transactions on Industry Appplications, vol. 48, Energy Conf., INTELEC C´2011, pp. 1-8, 2011.
no. 2, pp. 708–719, March/April 20112. [16] M. S. Ortmann, S. A.. Mussa, and M. L. Heldwein,
[3] E. H. Kim, J. M. Kwon, annd B. H. Kwon, “Three-Phase Multilevvel PFC Rectifier Based on
“Transformerless three-phase on-line UPS with high Multistate Switching Cells”,
C in IEEE Transactions on
performance”, in IET Power Electrronics, Vol. 2, Iss. 2, Power Electronics, vol.. 30, no. 4, pp. 1843–1854, April
pp. 103–112, 2009. 2015.
[4] H. Akagi, and R. Kondo, “A Trannsformerless Hybrid [17] BASCOPÉ, René; NET TO, João AF; BASCOPÉ, Grover
Active Filter Using a Threee-Level Pulsewidth VT. Multi-state commuutation cells to increase current
Modulation (PWM) Converter forr a Medium-Voltage capacity of m
multi-level inverters. In:
Motor Drive”, in IEEE Transactions on Power Telecommunications Energy
E Conference (INTELEC),
Electronics, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 1365––1374, June 2010. 2011 IEEE 33rd Internaational. IEEE, 2011. p. 1-9.
[5] U. Badstuebner, J. Biela, D. Christten, and J.W. Kolar, [18] VENABLE, H. Deaan. The K factor: A new
“Optimization of a 5-kW Telecom Phase-Shift DC–DC mathematical tool for stability analysis and synthesis.
Converter With Magnetically Integrated Current In: Proceedings of POWWERCON. 1983. p. 1-12.
Doubler”, in IEEE Transactioons on Industrial
Electronics, vol. 58, no. 10, pp. 4736–4745,
4 October
2011.