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DC/AC inverter for telecommunication power-supply system

Tadashi Yoshida, Hiroya Yajima, Shinya Takagi, and Takeru Tawara

NTT Facilities, Inc.
Granpark Tower, 3-4-1 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023, Japan

Ryu Sudo, Junpei Hayakawa

Shindengen Electric Manufacturing Co., Ltd.
10-13 Minamimachi, Hannou-shi, Saitama 357-8585, Japan

Abstract Network (NGN) service, thereby further expanding

The Internet business is rapidly growing in
recent years, and therefore the installation of new
electrical facilities and the expansion of existing
facilities are increasing. However, there are two
problems facing these facilities: How to secure
installation space, and the increase in power
consumption of the facilities. There is also a
demand for compact, highly efficient power supply.
As the input power supply for datacom equipment
used for telecommunication services, DC-48V has
been the mainstream, but some routers and other
devices that require AC100V are found in the
telecommunication buildings. For such devices, an
uninterruptible power system (UPS) is
incorporated in many cases. However, the
installation of UPS, which also requires a
dedicated battery, possibly poses additional
problems of installation space and investment costs.
Considering this situation, we have developed and
put into operation a highly reliable, space-saving
DC/AC inverter that converts DC-48V input into
AC100V output. When an existing UPS is replaced
by this DC/AC inverter, operation of the datacom
equipment may not be allowed to stop during the
transfer from the UPS to the DC/AC inverter. The
details and installation procedure of the DC/AC
inverter are described in detail in the paper.
1. Background of the DC/AC inverter
development
Until now, DC power supply systems have been
used for telecommunication services because those
systems’ reliability and operational performance
have been superior to those of AC systems. In
2007, NTT started using the Next Generation
the installation of DC power supply systems.
On the other hand, AC power supply systems are
being used in a wide range of fields, not only in
telecommunication buildings or large data centers but
also in small or home office (SOHO) environments
because of the development of datacom equipment.
In 1997, NTT started the ISP business named of
an Open Computer Network (OCN) service, which
is using UPS. Currently, UPS with capacities
ranging from 1 kVA to 2500 kVA is widely used
for the applications of telecommunication services,
data centers, etc. Thus, NTT has developed and
operated both DC and AC power systems. Based
on such technological experience of development
and operation, we have developed and installed a
DC/AC inverter that fulfill the requirements of
installation space and investment costs involved in
UPS installation, for applications where the ratio
of AC to DC power is small. The objective of the
development is to produce a highly reliable,
readily serviceable, and economical DC/AC
inverter.
2. Outline of DC/AC inverter system
The DC/AC inverter is used in the
configuration illustrated in Fig. 1; a rectifier
supplies the DC-48V to the DC/AC inverter, which
is connected in parallel with other
telecommunication devices.
The capacity of each unit is 1 kVA (power
factor=0.9), and parallel operation of up to 5 units
is supported. High reliability can be realized by
N+1 (4+1) parallel redundant operation, using 5
parallel-connected units, in which operation
continues when one unit is failed, by disconnecting

978-1-4244-2056-8/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE

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the failed unit. Fig. 2 shows an example of the

output voltage and current waveforms when one
unit fails during parallel operation, illustrating that
the failed unit will be disconnected without
affecting the output waveforms.
The size of the unit (height=1U) is designed so
that it can be installed into a 19-inch rack.
Furthermore, hot swap capabilities are supported,
and the display unit is provided on the front for Fig3. External appearance of the inverter
easy replacement; thus, a highly serviceable
inverter is realized. The output current and the
over-load status can be indicated on the display. 3. Outline of DC/AC inverter unit
The operation status, failures, and measured output
current can be transferred to external devices, The circuit of the DC/AC inverter unit is
enabling remote monitoring of the inverter illustrated in Fig. 4. The inverter unit consists of a
operation. The external appearance of the inverter DC/DC step-up converter and a full-bridge inverter.
is shown in Fig. 3. The DC/DC step-up converter is used to boost the
DC-48V input to approximately DC 160V. A
built-in insulating transformer isolates the DC/DC
step-up converter from its input circuit. The
full-bridge inverter converts the DC160V to
DC100V output.
The electrical characteristics of the DC/AC
inverter unit are summarized in Table 1.

Table1. Electrical characteristics

Fig1. Configuration of Power Supply system

Fig2. Output waveforms when one unit fails

during parallel operation
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Fig4. Circuit Diagram of DC/AC inverter

4. Method of DC/AC inverter control By taking advantage of the fact that

synchronization of each unit in parallel operation
Generally, parallel redundant UPS requires can be achieved by only sensing the output voltage
control-signal wiring to synchronize each unit. A and current of each unit, the highly reliable DC/AC
functional unit which is responsible for the inverter system is realized.
signaling of synchronization can be one of the
factors that may deteriorate the system reliability.
With this developed DC/AC inverter, a
full-independent control method, with which
common control units are eliminated, is adopted to
synchronize the inverter units. The current flowing
from each inverter unit in parallel operation is the
sum of the cross current flowing between inverter
units and the load current flowing into the loads as
shown in Fig. 5. In the case of no-load operation,
the relation between the inverter output voltage
versus the cross current can be represented by an Fig5. The current flowing from each inverter
equivalent circuit shown in Fig. 6, and vector
diagram of the voltage and the current is shown in
Fig. 7. As shown in Fig. 7, the cross current is 90º
lagging behind the differential voltage ∆V between
the output voltages V1 and V2.
The phases of the output voltages V1 and V2
can be matched by increasing the frequency of V1
and decreasing the frequency of V2 so that
individual phase differences between output Fig6. Equivalent circuit
voltage and output current are minimized. Thus,
synchronization of each unit in parallel operation
can be achieved by implementing, for every unit,
this control, with which the frequency is slightly
decreased if the output voltage is leading from the
output current, and the frequency is slightly
increased if the voltage is lagging behind the
current.
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The relation of calculated MTBF versus the

number of inverter units in parallel operation is
plotted in Fig. 9 for the conditions of λINV = 6610
Fit, µ INV = 0.2, and λC = 150 Fit. The MTBF for
4+1 parallel redundant operation of the inverter
will be approximately 1.3 million hours, signifying
very high reliability.

Fig7. vector diagram

5. DC/AC inverter reliability

In general, a parallel redundant operation

system fails for the following two reasons:
(1) over-load resulting from failures of multiple
units at the same time, or
(2) a failure of the unit commonly responsible for
the entire system.
A reliability model (see Fig. 8) is usually used
to evaluate the total reliability of a system. It is Fig8. Reliability model
essential to identify the failure of a component and
determine the type of failure. The probability of
failure due to over-load (abovementioned case (1))
MTBF (10 Thousand Hours)

is very low, because the failure of two or more

units at the same time is very unlikely, and
therefore, system redundancy is maintained.
However, failure of a component for common
control (abovementioned case (2)) is serious,
leading to failure of the entire system. The
components of the DC/AC inverter were evaluated
using the method of Fault Mode Effect Analysis
(FMEA) to determine which type of the System Capacity (kVA)
abovementioned failure occurs. The formula (1)
given below for the computation of Mean Time Fig9. Relation of calculated MTBF versus the
Between Failure (MTBF) of an inverter system number of inverter units
was then used to evaluate the total reliability of the
system.

2
1/{N(N+1)λinv µinv+(N+1)λc}............................ (1)

N : Number of the inverter units in parallel

operation (up to 8)
λINV : Failure rate of the inverter unit
µINV : Repair rate of the inverter unit
λc : Failure rate of the common units for
inverters

6. DC/AC inverter installation procedure
The DC/AC inverter system is installed for two
reasons: One is to supply new datacom equipment,
and the other is to replace an existing UPS, of
which the service life has expired, to power
installed datacom equipment.
When replacing an installed UPS, the UPS is
usually stopped before the installation of the
DC/AC inverter system. Recently, however, the
availability of datacom equipment becomes
increasingly important, and downtime is not
allowed for many loads, even in case of facility
renovation. For such cases, NTT provides a
portable transfer switch that makes it possible to
perform the transfer without interrupting power. A
schematic diagram of the interruption-free transfer
is shown in Fig. 10. The power supply line is
changed from the existing one to the new line
through the transfer switch, and then transfer is
carried out by the action of the transfer switch
without interrupting power. Finally, new cables
will be laid, and the other cables will be removed
to complete the transfer.
This method of transfer is very useful, and can
be applied to any type of AC power facility.
Fig10. Summary of replacement system
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7. Summary
This DC/AC inverter makes it possible to
install a highly reliable, space-saving, and
economical power-supply system for applications
that previously required a compact UPS.
In the future, we will evaluate reliability based
on the results of actual operations.
References
[1] Kaoru Matsuzaki (Toshiba). “Technology for
Highly Dependable Large Capacity UPS
System” T.IEE. Japan, Vol.114-D, No3, ‘94
[2] Tadashi Yoshida, Keiichi Hirose, Masahiro
Hashiwaki, Tadafumi Yamamoto, Takuji
Serada, and Tomofumi Kawawaki. “Portable
Transfer Switch for Interruption-Free UPS
Replacement” INTELEC2003 pp.802-80
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