758

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 52, NO. 3, JUNE 2005

Active Damping Control of a High-Power PWM

Current-Source Rectifier for Line-Current
THD Reduction
Jason C. Wiseman, Member, IEEE and Bin Wu, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThe use of active damping to reduce the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the line current for medium-voltage
(2.37.2 kV) high-power pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) currentsource rectifiers is investigated. The rectifier requires an LC filter
connected at its input terminals, which constitutes an LC resonant
mode. The lightly damped LC filter is prone to series and parallel resonances when tuned to a system harmonic either from the
utility or from the PWM rectifier. These issues are traditionally
addressed at the design stage by properly choosing the filter resonant frequency. This approach may result in a limited performance
since the LC resonant frequency is a function of the power system
impedance, which usually varies with power system operating conditions.
In this paper, an active damping control method is proposed for
the reduction in line current THD of high-power current-source
rectifiers operating at a switching frequency of only 540 Hz. Two
types of LC resonances are investigated: the parallel resonance excited by harmonic currents drawn by the rectifier and the series
resonance caused by harmonic pollution in the source voltage. It
is demonstrated through simulation and experiments that the proposed active damping control can effectively reduce the line-current THD caused by both parallel and series resonances.
Index TermsActive damping, active front-end (AFE) converter, current-source rectifier, pulsewidth-modulation (PWM)
rectifier, space-vector modulation (SVM).

I. INTRODUCTION

Fig. 1. PWM current-source rectifier using symmetrical GCTs.

applications, utilizing switching frequencies of several kilohertz to damp out transient oscillations [4], [5]. High-power
medium-voltage current-source rectifiers conventionally use
symmetric gate-turn-off thyristors (GTOs) or gate-controlled
thyristors (GCTs) which have a usable switching frequency
in the hundreds of hertz. An active damping technique was
proposed for high-power low-switching-frequency applications
[6]. However, the technique was used on the inverter side to
achieve multimotor operation instead of total harmonic distortion (THD) reduction. In this paper, the effectiveness of active
damping at reducing the THD of the line current in both seriesand parallel-resonant modes is investigated.

IGH-POWER current-source rectifiers are typically used

in medium-voltage (2.37.2 kV) ac drives [1][3]. As
required at the input of the
shown in Fig. 1, the capacitor
rectifier forms an LC filter with the source impedance. Since
usually varies with power system opthe source inductance
erating conditions, it is usually augmented with a filter reactor
to control the maximum resonant frequency. The variation
in the source impedance may move the LC resonant frequency
close to a system harmonic. This can result in a line current
with substantial distortion due to harmonic pollution from the
utility or from the rectifier itself.
The concept of active damping for the current-source rectifier
is not new. However, most research has been for low-power

It is well known that any LC resonances can be suppressed by

adding a physical damping resistor into the resonant system [7].
For a current-source rectifier, the most convenient location for
the damping resistor is in parallel with the input filter capacitor
. This location is effective at damping both series- and parallel-resonant modes given by

Manuscript received December 31, 2003; revised March 10, 2004. Abstract
published on the Internet March 14, 2005. An earlier version of this paper was
presented at the 2004 IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conference, Aachen,
Germany, June 2026.
J. Wiseman is with Rockwell Automation Canada, Cambridge, ON N1R 5X1,
Canada (e-mail: jwiseman@ra.rockwell.com).
B. Wu is with Ryerson University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada (e-mail:
bwu@ee.ryerson.ca).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2005.843939

The filter capacitor

for high-power current-source rectifiers
with a switching frequency of a few hundred hertz is usually in
the range of 0.30.5 per unit (pu) while the total line inductance
is normally between 0.090.15 pu. The resultant LC
resonant frequency is in the range of 3.656.09 pu.
Active damping uses the rectifier to emulate a damping resistance in the system. The simplest configuration to implement is

II. PRINCIPLE OF ACTIVE DAMPING CONTROL

(1)

0278-0046/$20.00 2005 IEEE

WISEMAN AND WU: ACTIVE DAMPING CONTROL OF A HIGH-POWER PWM CURRENT-SOURCE RECTIFIER

Fig. 2. Block diagram of space-vector-controlled current-source rectifier with

active damping control.

a resistor in parallel with the filter capacitor. In this configuration, the rectifier draws a damping current proportional to the
capacitor voltage
(2)
It should be noted that active damping is a much different
control scheme than active filtering. Active filtering is a much
more complicated process utilizing harmonic injection to eliminate or minimize harmonic distortion in the line current. By
contrast, active damping is used to improve the dynamics of the
lightly damped LC filter, thereby indirectly improving the THD
of the line current.
A. Frequency-Selective Active Damping
Previous work on current-source systems [4][6] has used active damping methods that provide damping for all frequencies
including the fundamental. The more practical implementation
of active damping for the current-source rectifier is to emulate
a resistor which damps all frequencies except the fundamental
[8]. This is mainly due to: 1) the fundamental component of the
damping current will result in an active power flowing into the
rectifier which will interfere with the control of the dc current;
2) the lowest LC resonant frequency is around 3.65 pu, which
will not excite resonances at the fundamental frequency; and
3) damping of fundamental quantities requires a large amount
of control effort which may saturate the modulation index. For
these reasons, damping of the fundamental component should
not be implemented.
B. Proposed Active Damping System
The proposed active damping control for pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) current-source rectifiers is shown in Fig. 2. Due
to the selection of the cutoff frequency of the input LC filter of
the rectifier, the dominant low-order harmonic in the line current
is the fifth. Therefore, the active damping loop will be injecting
primarily fifth harmonic current in steady state, along with current at the filter resonant frequency during transients. The frequency selectivity of the active damping is realized by transforming the three-phase capacitor voltage feedback from the stationary reference frame into the synchronous reference frame.
In this reference frame the capacitor voltage is represented as
a vector having and axes aligned with the reference frame.
The fundamental component of the capacitor voltage vector in

Fig. 3.

759

Effect of saturation of the modulation index.

this frame is a dc component, and can be easily removed using

a high-pass filter (HPF). The resulting harmonic component of
the capacitor voltage vector is transformed to a damping current reference vector using the active damping resistance pa. In order to obtain the desired current magnitude,
rameter
must be normalized to the measured dc current . This rewhich
sults in the active damping modulation index vector
is then added to the modulation index vector used for dc current
and used as a reference to the PWM modulator. In
control
the synchronous reference frame, the dc output voltage of the
rectifier is proportional to the average axis of the modulation index vector. Therefore, the dc current can be controlled
through a simple proportionalintegral (PI) controller through
. In steady state, the active damping modulathe axis of
tion index vector rotates at six times the fundamental frequency
in the synchronous reference frame due to the high amount of
fifth harmonics in the system. The combined modulation index
vector is shown in Fig. 3.
The intended application of this active damping system is for
high-power current-source rectifiers using switching frequencies of several hundred hertz. At very low switching frequencies, the preferred modulation technique is selective harmonic
elimination (SHE), an offline-generated pattern capable of eliminating certain low-order harmonics [1]. For a given switching
frequency, the SHE scheme generally produces waveforms superior to online techniques such as space-vector modulation
(SVM) [8]. It should be noted that the voltage or current waveforms generated by any SVM scheme usually contain low-order
harmonics, such as fifth or seventh.
In this system, resonance of the LC filter can be excited by
current harmonics produced by the rectifier, or by voltage harmonics in the utility. While the SHE scheme has the advantage
of not producing any of its own harmonic pollution, being an
offline technique it lacks the capability of providing a means of
active damping for the utility harmonics. For this reason, the online digitally implemented SVM PWM technique is used.
The choice of switching frequency has a significant impact on
the effectiveness of the active damping system. As the dominant
harmonics in the active damping current approach the switching
frequency, both the effectiveness and the stability of the active damping control loop are reduced. In practice, the use of
a switching frequency approximately twice the oscillation frequency gives adequate results. Since the dominant harmonics in
this system are around 300 Hz, a switching frequency of 540 Hz
is used.

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Fig. 5. Simulated THD versus series resistance R and resonant frequency

f for parallel resonance without active damping.
Fig. 4. Simulated rectifier current i , line current i , and capacitor phase
voltage v for parallel resonance without active damping.

III. THD REDUCTION FOR PARALLEL RESONANCE

The parallel LC resonance is normally excited by the current
harmonics produced by the PWM rectifier. Referring to Fig. 2,
the resonant mode of the input filter as seen by the rectifier can
be found by short circuiting the utility voltage source. In doing
and source inductance
are effectively
so, the line reactor
.
placed in parallel with the input filter capacitor
To investigate the effect of LC resonances on line-current
THD, let us consider a current-source rectifier rated at 1 MW
and 4160 V. The rectifier operates with a switching frequency
of 540 Hz, constant dc current of 0.5 pu at 50% of maximum dc
output voltage, and a dc-link choke of 1 pu. The series resistance
is assumed to be 0.5% (0.005 pu), which is the total line resistance of the transmission line, filter inductance, and isolation
transformer, if any. The input filter is tuned to the fifth harmonic
using the total line inductance of 0.1 pu and the filter capacitance of 0.4 pu. The simulated rectifier current , line current
and capacitor phase voltage
are shown in Fig. 4. Since
there is no active damping present, the fifth harmonic produced
by the PWM rectifier excites the parallel-resonant mode of the
input filter. This is evident in the large amount of fifth harmonic
present in the line current and capacitor voltage waveforms. The
THD in the line current is 105%.
Fig. 5 shows the THD profile for this system with a variable
of 0.25%1.5% and resonant frequency
series resistance
from 3.5 to 6 pu. The input filter values are calculated using
a 4 : 1 ratio of pu input capacitor to total line inductance. The
dominant shape of this THD profile is a crest for the resonant
mode of the filter tuned to the fifth harmonic. The THD of the
of 5 pu and a total
line current for a resonant frequency
series resistance of 0.5% is 105%. Considering an extreme case
where the series resistance is 1.5% (impractically high), the line
current THD is still 60%, which is unacceptable.
The LC resonance problem is traditionally addressed by selecting a proper resonant frequency using reasonable values for
and
. However, the source inductance
is usually unknown and may vary with power system operating conditions.

Fig. 6. Simulated rectifier current i , line current i , and capacitor phase

voltage v for parallel resonance with 1-pu active damping resistance.

Unless excessively large values of

and
are used, it is posto change such that the filter
sible for the source inductance
resonant mode is excited by a low-order harmonic. The use of
the active damping control can effectively suppress the LC resonance, and therefore simplifies the design of the input filter as
well.
The effect of the active damping control on line current THD
for the rectifier operating under the same conditions is shown
in Fig. 6. When the filter is tuned to the fifth harmonic, an active damping resistance of 1 pu results in a line current THD
of 5%, which is about 21 times lower than that when active
damping is not used (Fig. 4). The effect of active damping at
reducing the sensitivity to the resonant frequency is easily seen
in the THD profile shown in Fig. 7. As the active damping resistance decreases, the crest in the THD profile flattens. With an
active damping resistance of 1 pu, the THD profile is almost a
, which is desirlinear function of the resonant frequency
able. The line current THD increases with resonant frequency
due to the reduced effectiveness of the input filter at reducing

WISEMAN AND WU: ACTIVE DAMPING CONTROL OF A HIGH-POWER PWM CURRENT-SOURCE RECTIFIER

Fig. 7. Simulated THD versus active damping resistance

frequency f for parallel resonance.

and resonant

Fig. 8. Simulated rectifier current i , line current

v for series resonance without active damping.

761

, and capacitor voltage

the switching ripple. However, high resonant frequencies combined with a low active damping resistance reduce the stability
of the active damping loop. For this reason, active damping resistances below 1 pu are not shown because the small decrease
in THD is not significant compared to the reduction of system
stability. The effect of active damping resistance on system stability will be discussed in Section V.

IV. THD REDUCTION FOR SERIES RESONANCE

Series LC resonance can occur when the source voltage is
polluted, and the LC filter is tuned to one of the harmonics. The
resonant mode seen by the utility supply can be determined by
disconnecting the PWM rectifier from the input capacitor. This
in series with the line reactor
leaves the input capacitor
and source inductance .
To investigate the effect of the series resonance, the rectifier
system under investigation remains the same as that for the parallel resonance except that the source now contains 1% fifth harmonic. The input filter is tuned to the fifth harmonic using a total
line inductance of 0.1 pu and a filter capacitance of 0.4 pu.
The simulated line current waveforms without and with active
damping are shown in Figs. 8 and 9, respectively. The THD of
the system without active damping is 216%, much higher than
that caused by the parallel resonances. This is due to the fact
that the harmonics in this case are injected into the filter from
both the source and the rectifier, resulting in a much higher line
current THD. However, when an active damping resistance of 1
pu is used, the line current THD is reduced to 7% as shown in
Fig. 9. This represents a reduction of THD by a factor of almost
31.
Fig. 10 shows the THD profile for the rectifier without active
damping control, which is similar to that in the parallel resonance case given in Fig. 4, except that the magnitude is much
larger due to the extra harmonics from the source. The THD profile exhibits a large crest at the fifth harmonic. The THD profile
for series resonance is significantly flatter when active damping

Fig. 9. Simulated rectifier current i , line current i , and capacitor voltage v

for series resonance with 1-pu active damping.

Fig. 10. Simulated THD versus series resistance R and resonant frequency
f for series resonance without active damping.

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Fig. 11. Simulated THD versus active damping resistance

frequency f for series resonance.

and resonant

is used as shown in Fig. 11, especially when a low value of active damping resistance is employed.
V. SELECTION OF ACTIVE DAMPING RESISTANCE
As discussed earlier, a small value of the active damping reis preferred for minimizing the line current THD.
sistance
is too small, the active
However, if the damping resistance
damping loop gain becomes too high, and the active damping
is
system may become unstable. In addition, the choice of
also constrained by the limitations of the modulation index. This
is a function of the rectifier operating point and the harmonic
pollution levels in the system. When the dc current is small, a
will result in saturation of the modulation
small value for
index due to the normalization of the damping current with the
dc current. As the dc current approaches zero, the required active damping current will no longer be realizable due to extreme
saturation of the modulation index. This problem can be solved
by imposing a lower limit on the value of dc current used to normalize the active damping current reference.
Saturation of the modulation index may also occur when the
rectifier is producing a maximum dc output voltage. Under these
conditions, the active damping resistance should be increased.
Otherwise, the active damping compensation will actually degrade the line current waveform due to the distorted damping
current. An example of saturation of the modulation index can
is a constant
be seen in Fig. 3. In steady-state operation,
value in the axis. When there is significant fifth harmonic polwill be a vector that rotates at six times
lution in the system,
and
results in
the line frequency. The vector addition of
vector whose magnitude exceeds the maximum realizable value
of unity. This will significantly distort the active damping current that is produced by the rectifier. This saturation will also
cause undesirable interaction with the dc current control by reducing the effective dc output voltage. This phenomenon occurs
due to saturation. Nordue to the asymmetry imposed on
follows a circular trajectory and does
mally, due to the HPF,
not have any average value in the d or q axis. However, as shown

no longer follows a circular train Fig. 11, under saturation

jectory, and obtains a negative bias in the axis. This problem
can be avoided by reducing the dc output voltage, or increasing
the active damping resistance such that the modulation index is
not saturated.
The delay from the PWM generation, signal filtering, and the
dead time due to finite calculation time will cause a phase delay
in the implemented damping current. Using a small value for the
active damping resistor will reduce the gain and phase margin
and destabilize the filter in the presence of this delay. The PWM
technique used in this system calculates the current switching
pattern based on the current sampled data, requiring a fast digital signal processor (DSP) to minimize the calculation time.
The total PWM and control delay can be approximated from
.
the effective switching frequency and the calculation time
For the space-vector PWM technique used, the delay is approximately equal to one-half the sample period or one-quarter the
switching period, given by

(3)
The small-signal model of the active damping loop can be
approximated with the assumption that the effect of the dc current ripple is negligible. The open-loop active damping system
can be modeled using the parallel filter impedance, the
, the total damping current delay
damping current gain
, and the dynamics of the HPF in Fig. 2. From this model, the
minimum damping resistance for stability of the approximated
system can be determined based on the gain and phase margins
of the open-loop gain equation

(4)
As an example, an idealized system with a clean source voltage
and a smooth dc current is considered. A filter resonant frepu,
pu), a sequency of 6 pu (
ries resistance of 0.5%, and a switching frequency of 540 Hz
are used. The total calculation time is 25 s, and the HPF cutoff
is 20 Hz. The gain and phase margins of the active damping
loop are plotted in Fig. 12 as a function of the active damping
resistance . Fig. 12 should not be confused with a frequency
response. Rather, it is the approximate gain and phase margin
of the active damping loop obtained from a set of frequency responses at different active damping resistances. It can be observed that the idealized system goes unstable with an active
damping resistance of around 0.55 or less. In general, the system
is easier to stabilize at lower resonant frequencies. The same
system with a resonant frequency of 4.5 pu instead of 6 pu becomes unstable with an active damping resistance of 0.32 pu.
In the practical system, the effects of saturation of the modulation index require a much larger active damping resistance than
the minimum required for stability. To allow for reasonable gain
and phase margin, and to prevent saturation of the modulation
index, the recommended minimum value for the active damping
resistor for this system is 1.0.

WISEMAN AND WU: ACTIVE DAMPING CONTROL OF A HIGH-POWER PWM CURRENT-SOURCE RECTIFIER

763

Fig. 12. Gain and phase margin versus active damping resistance R for
idealized rectifier system. (a) Gain margin. (b) Phase margin.

Fig. 14. Measured waveforms of the low-power PWM rectifier at 50% I and
40% V . (a) Without active damping. (b) With active damping.

VI. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION

Fig. 13. Simulated waveforms of the low-power laboratory PWM rectifier at

50% I and 40% V . Waveforms from top to bottom: i , i , and v . (a) Without
active damping. (b) With active damping.

The proposed active damping technique is implemented using

a dSPACE DS-1103 DSP controller and Matlab/Simulink RealTime Workshop software. The current-source rectifier under test
is rated at 208 V and 10 kVA. It has a dc choke of 10 mH
(0.87 pu), a filter inductor of 1 mH (0.087 pu) and a delta-connected filter capacitor of 80 F (0.39 pu per phase). The load
is a constant resistance of 5.2 (1.2 pu). The rectifier, using
Toshiba GTO thyristors switching at a frequency of 540 Hz, is
controlled by a space-vector PWM with a simple three-state sequence [8]. Power to the system is supplied by a 208-V 150-kVA
distribution transformer. Since its rating is much larger than the
rectifier, the equivalent source inductance is around 0.5%. This
places the resonant frequency near 5.42 pu (325 Hz). The source
voltage contains approximately 1% fifth harmonic due to the
transformer saturation.
Simulated results for this system without and with active
damping control are shown in Fig. 13. An active damping
resistance of 1 pu was used. The corresponding experimental
results are shown in Fig. 14. When active damping is not used,
the line current waveform is oscillatory, but is not as severe as
that shown in Figs. 3 or 7. This is mainly due to the fact that the
resonant frequency of the input filter is not exactly tuned at the
fifth harmonic. With the active damping control, LC resonance

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can be effectively suppressed, resulting in a nearly sinusoidal

line current waveform.
VII. CONCLUSION
An active damping control method has been proposed for use
in medium-voltage high-power current-source rectifiers to reduce the line current THD. The effect of parallel and series LC
resonances on the line-current THD was investigated. The principle of active damping control was elaborated and guidelines
for selecting the active damping resistance were provided. The
active damping control is capable of suppressing LC resonances
due to harmonics either from the utility supply or the rectifier
and, thus, significantly reduces the line-current THD. The use
of the active damping control also simplifies the design of the
input filter since the variation in the power system impedance
on the LC resonant mode is largely mitigated. The proposed active damping method works very well for the rectifier with a
switching frequency of only 540 Hz. The effectiveness of the
active damping control was verified by simulation and experiments.
APPENDIX A
The THD is defined by

A variable time step is used for the Simulink simulations,

is extracted using Fourier series
therefore, the fundamental
during simulation run time instead of a post-simulation fast
Fourier transform (FFT).
APPENDIX B
The pu system is a method of normalizing system variables
and parameters to the rated phase voltage and current of the
system. This allows for a simple comparison between systems
of different power levels. Conversion of engineering values into
pu values is done by dividing by the base value for that unit.
If the base voltage is defined to be the rated phase voltage, and
the base current is defined to be the rated line current, the base
impedance is defined to be

The base frequency is

where is the nominal frequency of the utility supply. The base

capacitance and inductance can be defined from their impedance
at the base frequency as
and

Consider a three-phase PWM rectifier system rated at 4160 V,

60 Hz, and 1 MVA. The base voltage is 2401.8 Vrms and the
base current is 138.8 Arms. If the dc-link inductor is 41.3 mH,
and the line filter capacitor is 61.3 F, the corresponding pu
inductance and capacitance are 0.9 and 0.4 pu, respectively.
REFERENCES
[1] B. Wu, S. A. Dewan, and G. R. Slemon, PWM-CSI inverter for induction motor drives, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 6471,
Jan./Feb. 1992.
[2] H. R. Karshenas, H. A. Kojori, and S. B. Dewan, Generalized techniques of selective harmonic elimination and current control in currentsource inverters/converters, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 10, no.
5, pp. 566573, Sep. 1995.
[3] Y. Xiao, B. Wu, F. DeWinter, and R. Sotudeh, A dual GTO current
source converter topology with sinusoidal inputs for high power applications, in Proc. IEEE APEC97, 1997, pp. 679684.
[4] J. R. Espinoza and G. Joos, State variable decoupling and power flow
control in PWM current-source rectifiers, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron.,
vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 8087, Feb. 1998.
[5] Y. Sato and T. Kataoka, A current type PWM rectifier with active
damping function, in Conf. Rec. IEEE-IAS Annu. Meeting, vol. 3,
1995, pp. 23332340.
[6] J. D. Ma, B. Wu, and N. Zargari, A space vector modulated CSI-based
drive for multi-motor applications, in Proc. IEEE APEC99, 1999, pp.
800806.
[7] N. R. Zargari, G. Joos, and P. Ziogas, Input filter design for PWM
current-source rectifiers, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 30, no. 6, pp.
15731579, Nov./Dec. 1994.
[8] J. C. Wiseman, B. Wu, and G. S. P. Castle, A PWM current-source rectifier with active damping for high power medium voltage applications,
presented at the IEEE PESC02, Cairns, Australia, Jun. 2427, 2002.

Jason C. Wiseman (M03) received the B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering with honors from Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 1997, and
the M.E.Sc. degree from the University of Western
Ontario, London, ON, Canada, in 2001.
In 2000, he joined Rockwell Automation
Canada, Cambridge, ON, Canada, as a Development Engineer. Currently, he is involved in
medium-voltage drive control and power electronics.
His research interests include pulsewidth modulation, control and signal processing techniques for
high-power/medium-voltage drives, and power conditioning equipment.

Bin Wu (S89M92SM99) received the M.A.Sc.

and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON,
Canada, in 1989 and 1993, respectively.
After being with Rockwell Automation Canada
as a Senior Engineer, he joined Ryerson University,
Toronto, ON, Canada, where he is currently a
Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests include
high-power converter topologies, motor drives, and
application of advanced control in power electronic
systems.
Dr. Wu is the recipient of the Gold Medal of the Governor General of
Canada, the Premiers Research Excellence Award, Ryerson Sarwan Sahota
Distinguished Scholar Award, and the NSERC Synergy Award for Innovation.
He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario, Canada.