1
Predictive Current Control with Reduction of
Switching Frequency for Three Phase Voltage
Source Inverters
Patricio Cortes, Luna Vattuone, Jose Rodriguez
Universidad Técnica Federico Santa Marı́a
Av. España 1680, Valparaiso, Chile
email: patricio.cortes@usm.cl
Abstract—In order to improve the performance at steady
state of a three-phase drive system, numerous works have been
focused in reducing the current and torque ripple. Predictive
current control allows the improvement of the performance by
increasing the sampling frequency, but the resulting switching
frequency can generate semiconductors operating point out of
their thermal limits. The ripple of current using conventional
linear current control with pulse width modulation is reduced by
increasing the carrier frequency, however, the upper limit of the
switching frequency is limited also by the semiconductors thermal
rates. In this paper a predictive current control modification is
proposed for reducing the switching frequency by decoupling it
from the sampling time, thus the performance of the system is
improved but the switching frequency is kept bellow its limits. A
comparison between the proposed method and linear current
control with PWM of a three phase voltage source inverter
operating at steady state is presented.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The development of current control strategies to increase the
three-phase drive system performance is a topic where today’s
research efforts have been focused.
Considering that low output ripple current and constant in-
verter switching frequency is generated, linear current control
with pulse width modulation (PWM) is the common method
used in conventional applications.
In order to optimize the dynamic of the system performance,
numerous works have been developed to improve the transient
behavior. Considering linear current control, the average dead
time of the controller affect the transient behavior of the
whole drive [1]. An enhanced dynamic behavior is possible
by increasing the carrier signal of the modulator, however,
an augmented thermal stress of power semiconductors is
included. A strategy for dynamically changing the switching-
frequency and the bandwidth by using Dynamic Frequency
Scaling (DFS) technique in combination with PWM modulator
is presented in [2], but it needs high demand on calculation
power. A good alternative is presented in [3] by using a novel
predictive current control technique to optimize switching
frequency and transient response of the current loop.
In recent years predictive control has attracted much at-
tention for power converters and drives applications due to
several advantages: good dynamic response, straightforward
inclusion of non-linearities and restrictions in the model and
in the control [4]. This new approach considers a model of
978-1-4244-9312-8/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 1817
the system over a horizon in time. An optimization problem
providing the sequence of future actuations is solved by
minimizing a predefined cost function which represents the
desired behavior of the system. In addition, the discrete nature
of power converters makes easy to solve the optimization
problem by directly evaluating all possible switching states.
This scheme has been used for the control of three-phase
inverters [5], three-level neutral point clamped inverters [6],
matrix converters [7], [8], induction machines [9], rectifiers
[10], and others [11], achieving a simple and flexible control
with good performance.
A strategy to increase of the system performance at steady
state reducing the current and torque ripple is possible by
considering high carrier signal frequency in PWM-based
schemes. However, high switching frequency is generated and
the switching losses generally characterize the upper limit of
the possible switching frequency so a cost reduction is not
possible [12], [13].
Considering predictive current control a reduced current
and torque ripple can be achieved by increasing the sampling
frequency, however the switching frequency depends on the
sampling frequency so the improvement of performance also
depends on the semiconductors characteristics.
In this paper a modification of the predictive current control
is proposed. By using a penal weight in the cost function
for the voltage vector change, the switching frequency can
be decoupled from the sampling frequency. In addition, by
considering a reduced set of possible next voltage vectors that
imply commutation of only one inverter leg, it is possible
to increase the sampling frequency without increasing the
switching frequency, thus an improvement of performance can
be achieved keeping the semiconductors below their thermal
limits.
This work presents also a performance comparison between
the proposed method and linear current control with PWM of
a three phase voltage source inverter operating at steady state.
The comparison parameter is the current ripple by measuring
the absolute current error for different values of switching
frequency.
II. T HREE - PHASE SYSTEM
A two-level three-phase voltage source inverter supplying a
three-phase passive R-L load is presented in Fig. 1.
 2

Sa Sb Sc

L R
a
Vdc b
n
c
Sa Sb Sc
Fig. 3. Linear current control with PWM block diagram.

Fig. 1. Three-phase voltage source inverter. 2

v= Vdc (Sa + aSb + a2 Sc ) (4)
3
where Vdc is the voltage of the dc link.
!
Considering the combinations of the switching state of three
V3 (0 1 0) V2 (1 1 0)
legs of the inverter, there are 23 = 8 possible switching states
Si = {Sa , Sb , Sc }(i ∈ [0, 7]), so there are 8 voltage vectors at
the vectorial subspace. Voltage vectors and their corresponding
switching states are shown in Fig. 2.
V4 (0 1 1) V1 (1 0 0)
"
III. L INEAR C URRENT C ONTROL WITH PWM
V0 (0 0 0),V7 (1 1 1)
The linear current control with PWM scheme is shown in
V5 (0 0 1) V6 (1 0 1) Fig. 3. The difference between the reference i∗ and measured
i load current is processed by a proportional-integral (PI) con-
troller to generate the reference load voltage v∗ . For generating
the drive signals for the inverter semiconductors a modulator
is used. The reference load voltages are compared with a
Fig. 2. Voltage vectors generated by the inverter.
triangular carrier signal, and the output of each comparator
is used to drive an inverter leg.
The performance of this control scheme depends on the
A. Three-phase load model design of the controller parameters, and in some applications
The following vector equation models the load current it depends also on the frequency of the reference current. In
dynamics: this work, current control in rotating dq coordinates system is
di considered, thus zero steady state error is obtained indepen-
v = Ri + L (1) dently of the reference current frequency. The discrete time PI
dt
controller is defined as the following vectorial equation:
The model (1) can be written in the following discrete-time
form: Tm kp

RTs

Ts ∆v∗ = kp ∆ei + ei (5)
i(k + 1) = 1 − i(k) + v(k) (2) 2Ti
L L
where ei is the difference between the reference i∗ and mea-
where Ts is the sampling time. sured i load current, kp and Ti are the controller parameters to
design depending on the load values, and Tm is the sampling
B. Three-Phase Voltage Source Inverter Vectorial Model time.
Using PWM the switching frequency fsw is constant and
A three-phase system has two degrees of freedom, which its value is equal to the carrier frequency fc . Considering that
can be used to define an equivalent transformation of three the sampling time is Tm , the carrier frequency is calculated
variables to one vectorial space as follows : as follows:
1
v = vα + jvβ fc = (6)
2Tm
2
= (van + avbn + a2 vcn ) (3)
3 IV. P REDICTIVE C URRENT C ONTROL
where a = exp j2π A. Control Strategy
3 .
The switching vectors can be calculated directly from the Working on the α − β plane, the scheme in Fig. 4 shows
switching functions: the predictive control strategy applied to the current control
1818
 3

TABLE I
S UBSET OF ALLOWED NEXT VOLTAGE VECTORS FOR EACH VOLTAGE
VECTOR .

vk−1 Subset of allowed vectors

V0 (000) V0 (000) V1 (100) V3 (010) V5 (001)
V1 (100) V0 (000) V1 (100) V2 (110) V6 (101)
V2 (110) V1 (100) V2 (110) V3 (010) V7 (111)
V3 (010) V0 (000) V2 (110) V3 (010) V4 (011)
V4 (011) V3 (010) V4 (011) V5 (001) V7 (111)
V5 (001) V0 (000) V4 (011) V5 (001) V6 (101)
Fig. 4. Predictive current control block diagram.
V6 (101) V1 (100) V5 (001) V6 (101) V7 (111)
V7 (111) V2 (110) V4 (011) V6 (101) V7 (111)

for a three-phase inverter, which is explained in the following TABLE II

steps: PARAMETERS USED FOR SIMULATION .

1) The load current vector i(k) is measured and trans-
formed to α − β coordinates. The reference vector is
obtained from an outer control loop.
2) The value of the load current in the next sampling
interval i(k + 1) for each one of the eight different
voltage vectors is calculated in the block “Predictive
Model” by using the discrete model of the load (2).
3) “Minimization of cost function g” block evaluates the
error between reference vector and predicted currents.
The error is calculated using a cost function g:
g = |i∗α − ipα | + |i∗β − ipβ |
The voltage vector that minimizes the current error is
selected and the respective switching state is applied to
the inverter.
The sampling time used to execute the three steps for pre-
dictive control strategy described before is Ts . The switching
state of the inverter can be changed only at the end of the third
step, i.e. only once during each sampling period. Therefore the
switching frequency is limited to half the sampling frequency
(fs = 1/Ts ).
The value of fsw is the average switching frequency con-
sidering the switching state changes of the semiconductors
making up each leg of the inverter. It is defined as follows:
fswa + fswb + fswc
fsw =
3
where fswx with x ∈ {a, b, c} is the switching frequency
of the semiconductor associated to switching signal Sx (Fig.
1). It is defined in the following equation as the number of
commutations nx during a time interval Tf :
nx
fswx =
Tf
Simulation and experimental results have shown that the
switching states do not change in every sampling instant [5].
In fact the value of the average switching frequency fsw takes
a value between fs /5 and fs /4.
The performance of the control depends on the sampling
time, thus the absolute current error is smaller if the sampling
frequency is increased. However, the switching frequency
which upper bound is limited by the semiconductors thermal
rates, is also increased.
Parameter Value
R 10[Ω]
L 7[mH]
Vdc 520[V]
kp 3.485
Ti 8.6e-4
B. Reduction of the Switching Frequency
In order to increase the performance of the current control
the sampling frequency must be increased. However, the
(7) control scheme must be modified in order to decrease the
switching frequency to the acceptable limits of the switching
device. The following two modifications are made to the
predictive current control strategy described before:
1) Fig. 2 shows the switching state (Sa Sb Sc ) that generates
each voltage vector. Taking into account the voltage
vector applied in the previous sampling interval, the set
of allowed voltage vectors to be applied next can be
reduced to the ones that imply one or none switching
state change. In this way the set of allowed vectors is
reduced to four, as shown in Table I, depending on the
previous applied vector vk−1 .
2) An additional term is included in the cost function for
penalization of the voltage vector change as follows:
g = |i∗α − ipα | + |i∗β − ipβ | + λ|v − vk−1 | (10)
(8)
where v is the voltage vector used to calculate the
predicted current vector ip with equation (2), vk−1 is
the voltage vector applied the last period and λ is a
constant used as weighting factor.
The weighting factor handles the relation between terms
dedicated to reference tracking and reduction of switch-
(9) ing frequency within the cost function. A large value of
λ implies higher priority to that objective and will result
in lower switching frequency.
V. R ESULTS
In this section, simulations carried out with Matlab &
Simulink explore the performance of the proposed predictive
current control scheme to reduce the switching frequency for a
three-phase voltage source inverter. The results are compared
with linear current control using PWM.
1819

10
Absolute current error [A]
8
6
4
2
0 0
0 2000 4000 6000
Switching frequency [Hz]
Fig. 5. Comparison between Predictive current control without minimization
of switching frequency and linear current control with PWM. The range for
sampling time Ts is 20[µs] to 500[µs].
7 1.7[kHz].
6 PWM
Absolute current error [A]
5
4 13.9[kHz] and 930[Hz]. By decreasing the sampling time
3
2
1 The switching frequency for Ts = 50[µs] and Ts =
0 10[µs] using predictive current control without minimization
0 500 1000 1500 2000
Switching frequency [Hz]
Fig. 6. Comparison between Predictive current control with minimization of
switching frequency and linear current control with PWM. Ts = 50[µs]
The performance is measured in base on absolute current
error for a different values of switching frequency. The three-
phase system and linear controller parameters are presented
in Table II. A sinusoidal reference of 23[A] and 50[Hz] is
considered for the α − β currents components.
First, predictive current control using cost function (7) is
simulated, i.e. without reducing switching frequency. In order
to get a range of switching frequencies, simulations for a range
of sampling time are carried out. For comparison, simulations
using linear control with PWM were carried out changing
the carrier frequency within the same range obtained for
predictive control. Fig. 5 shows results for sampling time
between 20[µs] and 500[µs]. The corresponding values of
the average switching frequency are between 9.3[kHz] and
150[Hz]. It can be observed that the current error of predictive
current control is always higher than using PWM, except for
very low switching frequency values (less than 250[Hz]).
Results for the proposed predictive control method using
cost function (10) and the reduced set of vectors shown in
Table I are presented for sampling times Ts = 50[µs] and
Ts = 10[µs].
By using Ts = 50[µs] and changing the weighting factor
λ value between 1e − 5 and 34e − 5, values of switching
frequency between 2.5[kHz] and 200[Hz] are obtained. Fig.
6 shows that predictive current control presents less error
than using PWM for switching frequency values lower than
4
2
Predictive Predictive
PWM PWM
Absolute current error [A]
1.5
1
0.5
8000 10000 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000
Switching frequency [Hz]
Fig. 7. Comparison between Predictive current control with minimization of
switching frequency and linear current control with PWM. Ts = 10[µs]
Predictive
Results for Ts = 10[µs] are presented in Fig. 7. By
changing the weighting factor λ value between 1e − 7 and
20e−6 the values of switching frequency obtained are between
the performance of predictive current control is improved,
presenting lower error than using PWM for all the switching
frequency values.
2500 3000
of switching frequency, i.e. cost function (7), is 4[kHz] and
18[kHz] respectively. By using a subset of voltage vectors
as defined in Table I it is possible to decrease the switching
frequency to 2.8[kHz] for Ts = 50[µs] and 14[kHz] for
Ts = 10[µs]. Those values are obtained by using only the
first step of the proposed method, i.e. for λ = 0.
Depending on the inverter switching frequency characteris-
tics, the performance can be improved by using the proposed
method compared with linear control and PWM. For example,
by using a sampling time Ts = 10[µs], it is possible to get
lower current ripple than PWM, for inverters operating with
semiconductors switching frequency limit under 14[kHz].
Fig. 8 presents the alpha current component obtained by
using predictive current control without reduction of switching
frequency (top), predictive current control with reduction of
switching frequency (middle) and linear current control with
PWM (bottom). The switching frequency is 500[Hz] for each
case. In order to obtain this switching frequency, the sampling
time for predictive current control without minimization of
switching frequency has to be adjusted to Ts = 350[µs].
By using the proposed method with Ts = 50[µs], to obtain
this switching frequency the weighting factor is adjusted to
λ = 1.5e − 4. Therefore, by using the proposed method
it is possible to reduce the ripple of the load current by
reducing the sampling time while keeping the same average
switching frequency. The load voltage for phase a is presented
in Fig. 9 for the three control methods. As the Fig. 6 shows,
at this switching frequency the current ripple with proposed
predictive current control presents lower error than linear
current control with PWM.
Fig. 10 shows the alpha current component when the
switching frequency is 2.45[kHz] by using Ts = 50[µs] and
1820
 5

20
i!, i!* [A]

i!, i!* [A]

20
0 0
−20 −20
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04
20
i!, i!* [A]

i!, i!* [A]

20
0 0
−20 −20
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04
20
i!, i!* [A]

i!, i!* [A]

20
0 0
−20 −20
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04
Time [s] Time [s]

Fig. 8. Alpha current component and reference for a switching frequency Fig. 11. Alpha current component and reference for a switching frequency
of 500[Hz]. Predictive control without minimization of switching frequency of 2025[Hz]. Predictive control without minimization of switching frequency
(up), predictive control with minimization of switching frequency and Ts = (top), predictive control with minimization of switching frequency and Ts =
50[µs] (middle), and linear current control with PWM (down). 10[µs] (middle) and linear current control with PWM (bottom).

200

van [V]
200
van [V]

0 0
−200 −200
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04

200
van [V]
200
van [V]

0 0
−200 −200
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04

200
van [V]

200
van [V]

0 0
−200 −200
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04
Time [s] Time [s]

Fig. 9. Load voltage for phase a for a switching frequency of 500[Hz]. Pre- Fig. 12. Load voltage for phase a for a switching frequency of 2025[Hz].
dictive control without minimization of switching frequency (top), predictive Predictive control without minimization of switching frequency (top), pre-
control with minimization of switching frequency and Ts = 50[µs] (middle) dictive control with minimization of switching frequency and Ts = 10[µs]
and linear current control with PWM (bottom). (middle) and linear current control with PWM (bottom).

20 without minimization of switching frequency is Ts = 90[µs]

i!, i!* [A]

while for the proposed method it with Ts = 10[µs] the

0
switching frequency is adjusted by variation of the weighting
−20 factor.
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 Fig. 13 shows the alpha current component when the
switching frequency is 6[KHz] by using 2.2e − 6 as weight
20
factor and Ts = 10[µs]. For this switching frequency value
i!, i!* [A]

0 the performance of both control schemes is comparable but

−20 lower error is obtained using predictive control.
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04
Time [s]
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
Fig. 10. Alpha current component and reference for a switching frequency Predictive current control allows the improvement of a
of 2.45[kHz]. Predictive control with sampling time Ts = 50[µs] (top) and three-phase drive system performance operating at steady
linear current control with PWM (bottom).
state by decreasing the sampling time. However, this implies
to increase the switching frequency until values over the
semiconductors operating limits. A modification of predictive
a weighting factor λ = 1.6e − 5. For this switching frequency current control has been proposed. The method uses subsets of
value performance of both control schemes is comparable but voltage vectors at the optimization problem and a penal weight
lower error is obtained using linear current control with PWM, in switching state selection for controlling the switching fre-
as can be observed in Fig. 6. quency. In this way the performance is improved by increasing
Fig. 11 and Fig 12 present the alpha current component the sampling frequency, and the switching frequency can be
and load voltage for phase a respectively when the switching reduced to the required value by adjusting the weight factor.
frequency is 2025[Hz]. In order to obtain this switching A comparison between the proposed method and linear
frequency, the sampling time for predictive current control current control with PWM for three phase voltage sources
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 6

[8] P. Correa, J. Rodrı́guez, M. Rivera, J. Espinoza and J. Kolar, Predic-

20
tive control of an indirect matrix converter, IEEE Trans. on Industrial
i!, i!* [A]

Electronics, vol. 56, no. 6, pp. 1847-1853, June 2009.

0
[9] H. Miranda, P. Cortés, J. Yuz and J. Rodrı́guez, Predictive torque control
of induction machines based on state-space models, IEEE Trans. on
−20
Power Electronics, vol. 56, no. 6, pp. 1916-1924, June 2009.
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04
[10] J. Rodrı́guez, P. Cortés, P. Antoniewiez and M.Kazmierkowski, Direct
power control of an AFE using predictive control, IEEE Trans. on
20 Industrial Electronics, vol. 56, no. 5, pp. 1847-1853, June 2009.
i!, i!* [A]

[11] P. Cortés, G. Ortiz, J. Yuz, J. Rodrı́guez, S. Vásquez and L. Franquelo,

0 Model predictive control of an inverter with output lc filter for UPS
aplications, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, vol. 56, no. 6, pp. 1875-
−20
1883, June 2009.
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 [12] V. Blasko, R. Lukaszewski, R. Sladky On Line Thermal Model and
Time [s]
Thermal Management Strategy of a Three Phase Voltage Source Inverter.
Conf. Rec. IEEE-IAS Annu. Meeting, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 1423-1431.
Fig. 13. Alpha current component and reference for a switching frequency [13] N. Weitendorf, S. Bernet, Junction Temperature and Switching Fre-
of 6[kHz]. Predictive control with sampling time Ts = 10[µs] (top), and quency Prediction in Direct Torque Controlled Induction Motor Drives.
linear current control with PWM (bottom). Power Electronics Specialists Conference, IEEE PESC 2008, pp. 338-344,
June 2008.

inverters has been presented based on the performance of

the drive system. The current ripple is used as comparison
parameter for a range of switching frequencies.
Depending on the inverter switching frequency characteris-
tics, the performance can be increased by using the proposed
method compared with linear control and PWM. By using
a sampling time Ts = 10[µs], it is possible to get lower
current ripple than with a PWM-based method for inverters
operating with semiconductors switching frequency limit un-
der 14[kHz]. Considering a sampling time Ts = 50[µs], this
is possible for switching frequencies lower than 1.7[kHz].
This strategy for improvement of the steady state perfor-
mance of the system using predictive control can be easily
adapted to other converter topologies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial sup-
port provided by the Chilean Research Fund CONICYT-
FONDECYT (Grant 1101011) and by Universidad Técnica
Federico Santa Marı́a.

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