Harmonic-Compensation based Control of a

Nonlinear Differential-Mode uk Inverter

Siamak Mehrnami, Student Member IEEE and Sudip K. Mazumder, Senior Member IEEE
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
Chicago, USA
{smehrn2, mazumder}@uic.edu
Abstract There are different topologies for realization of the
inverter. The differential-mode uk inverter, with features such
as reduced number of devices, reduced power dissipation, and
reduced ripple on the both the ac and the dc sides is a good
candidate for renewable-energy applications and microinverters. The voltage gain of the differential-mode uk inverter
is nonlinear for which compensation scheme needs to be
appropriately designed. This paper shows that, a proportionalresonant (PR) harmonic compensator can be used to control this
nonlinear inverter. Experimental results of the inverter using 3rd,
5th, 7th, and 9th order harmonic compensators yields voltage totalharmonic distortion (THD) less than 5% in standalone mode of
operation with resistive load.

Module 2 operate in the negative half of the line cycle. Fig. 2

illustrates this modulation scheme.

Keywords Differential-mode uk inverter, harmonic

compensation, inverter, single phase, control, switched-mode power
supply (SMPS).

I.

INTRODUCTION

There exist various architectures of power electronics as

dc-ac inverter with high-frequency transformers [1]-[3]. The
uk converter is one of the well-known converters because of
its reduced number of switches [4],[5]. The differential-mode
uk inverter shown in Fig. 1 is composed of two isolated uk
converters. It is connected in parallel at the dc side and
connected differentially on the ac side between the positive
output rails of the modules.

Fig. 1. Differential-mode uk inverter.

This paper presents a controller for the differential-mode

uk inverter [6],[7]. The topological switching based
modulation (TSBM) scheme is used, which introduced by [8]
and outlined in [9]. The switches of the Module 1 operate in
the positive half of the line cycle while the switches of the

Fig. 2. Illustration of the modulation scheme for the differential-mode uk

inverter shown in Fig. 1.

The push-pull switching has been originally introduced for

this inverter by [10] for power amplifier. TSBM has more
nonlinear voltage gain in comparison with push-pull switching.
But, it has zero circulating power, which means less power loss
and reduced device ratings. Fig. 3 shows the experimental
comparison of efficiency of both switching schemes. So, for
switched-mode power supply (SMPS) designs TSBM is
preferable, however nonlinear effect should be compensated by
proper closed loop design. This paper outlines realization of
control for standalone operation of inverter. It has been shown
that, a proportional-resonant (PR) and harmonic compensation
(HC) is able to come up with the nonlinear dynamics of the
inverter. Experimental results also prove the utility of the
designed controller.
II.

ANALYSIS AND CONTROL OF THE INVERTER

TSBM decreases the order of the system because at each

half cycle one of the modules is idle. So, there are two different
dynamical models in positive and negative half cycles.
However, considering the symmetry of two modules and
repetition of the waveform in each half cycle, exploring the
behavior of any one module would be enough.

Fig. 3 Inverter experimental efficiency comparison of both modulation as a

function of normalized voltage gain.

In the positive half cycle Qa and Qb are switching

complementarily while Qc is off and Qd is on continuously. In
the equivalent circuit of the system in positive half cycle, the
output filters Co2 and Ld of Module 2 are in parallel as shown
in Fig. 4. The average model eliminates the switching
frequency components of the states. The impedances of Co2 for
frequencies far below the switching frequency are significantly
greater than the impedances of Ld for corresponding
frequencies. So, for deriving the average model, Co2 can be
neglected. The approximate average model is used to capture
the output current behavior under the condition that the ac-side
current remains unchanged. So the input side capacitor is
absorbed by ideal input voltage source. All components are
also reflected to one side of the ideal transformer. This
simplified equivalent circuit is shown in Fig. 4 which also
shows the state variables in red.

(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)

These state equations show the nonlinear dynamics of the

system. The model could be linearized around operation point
at each instant. But due to the sinusoidal nature of the output,
the operation points vary constantly with the time. It could be
shown mathematically that if sinusoidal voltage is desired for
the output, the steady-state duty cycle expression should be a
function of fundamental- (i.e., line-) as well as higher-order
harmonic-frequency terms. A harmonic compensator (HC) is
selected following that observation. Each HC is a resonant
controller, which is tuned at corresponding harmonic
frequency.
Closed-loop voltage control architecture of the inverter in
standalone mode is shown in Fig. 5. It compares in real time
the ac voltage feedback with the generated ac voltage reference
signal. The resulting error is fed to the compensators. The
output of the compensation block provides the modulation
reference signal for the pulse-width modulation (PWM)
generator.

Fig. 6. Control diagram of the differential-mode uk inverter.

Fig. 4. Equivalent circuit of the system in positive half cycle.

The following average model is derived using the

equivalent circuit of Fig. 4. In these equations d is the duty
cycle of Qb and d' is the duty cycle of Qa and all other
parameters are labeled in Fig. 4.

Fig. 5. Simplified circuit for deriving average model of the inverter.

III. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE HARMONIC COMPENSATION

BASED CONTROL FOR THE NONLINEAR DIFFERENTIAL-MODE
UK INVERTER
A differential-mode uk inverter is implemented and
controlled using TMS320F28335 DSP core as shown in Fig. 7.
Transformer turns ratio is set at 2:1, switching frequency is set
at 250 kHz, and dc voltage is between 20-50 V. The 60-Hz ac
output is generated using TSBM and the load is resistive
500W. The PR compensation based control that accounts only
for compensation of the fundamental frequency component
leads to an acceptable voltage THD of less than 5% when the
peak of the ac voltage is equal or smaller than the reflected dc
voltage to the primary side. However, if higher peak voltage
gains are used more distortion appears on voltage waveform. A
higher ac voltage gains increases the nonlinearity and a single
PR controller cannot follow these changes. It is shown by
experimental results that adding harmonic compensation up to
9th order leads to acceptable distortion results.

Fig. 8 shows the experimental results for PR compensation

without harmonic compensation (HC) with input voltage of 40
V and 500W resistive load. This controller yields an outputvoltage THD of 15% or more. Adding HC improves the overall
controller performance.
Fig. 9 shows the experimental results for the same signal
but with 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th HC. This yields a voltage THD of
less than 5%. The spike near the zero crossing of the voltage is
due to non-smooth nonlinearity of the voltage gain and it
cannot be compensated by HC. But for practical purposes for
standalone operation this controller does the job well. For grid
connected application and better THD results another nonlinear
compensation should be considered. Such a controller is being
explored in our laboratory.
IV.
Fig. 7. Implemented differential-mode uk inverter.

CONCLUSION

The topological switching based method (TSBM) is better

from efficiency and device-rating point of view. But
nonlinearity effect should be compensated by proper controller
design. It is concluded that harmonic compensation can be
used to compensate the nonlinear voltage gain effect on voltage
waveform distortion in standalone mode. The zero-crossing
problem cannot be solved by harmonic compensation because
it is non-smooth nonlinearity; other nonlinear compensation
schemes are being explored.
REFERENCES
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Fig. 8. Experimental results of the differential-mode uk inverter at an input

voltage of 40 V and output frequency of 60 Hz. This result, yielding a THD >
15% is obtained using a PR compensator based control and without using HC.
Horizontal axis is set at 4.0ms/div and vertical axis is set at 30V/div.

Fig. 9. Experimental results of the differential-mode uk inverter for an input

voltage of 40 V and an output frequency of 60 Hz. This result, yielding a
THD < 5% is obtained using PR compensation based control addressing
fundamental frequency as well as 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th HCs. Horizontal axis is
set at 4.0ms/div and vertical axis is set at 30V/div.

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