Microelectronics Reliability 114 (2020) 113837

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Microelectronics Reliability
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/microrel

A method to improve the reliability of three-level inverter based on T

equivalent input disturbance and repetitive control combinations
Guoliang Yanga,b, , Jinze Yinb, Zhiying Huanga, Yuna Zhangb
⁎

a
The Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Bayin Guoleng Vocational and Technical College, Korla 841000, China
b
Electrical Engineering College, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, China

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The research and application of three-level inverters and related technologies are the mainstream development
Diode-clamped three-level inverter of modern power electronics technology. However, due to the influence of nonlinear load and dead zone effect,
Repetitive control the output voltage waveform will be severely distorted. In this paper, based on the harmonic problem appearing
Equivalent input disturbance in the voltage, it is proposed to apply the repetitive control with equivalent input disturbance (EID) in the diode
Reliability
clamp type three-level inverter to obtain a smooth and stable output voltage waveform. The effectiveness of the
control method is verified by simulation and experiment. The results show that this combined control method
can effectively suppress the periodic and non-periodic disturbances in the system and improve the reliability of
the whole system.

1. Introduction
With the wide application of three-level inverter technology, the
research on interference suppression in output signals is getting deeper
and deeper. Among them, the periodic disturbance caused by the dead
zone or load phase control is widely recognized. The harmonics of the
voltage or current output by the inverter not only cause a decrease in
the power factor, but also may cause the inverter itself and other de­
vices to be out of adjustment, posing a threat to the reliability of the
system.
The theory of repetitive control was first proposed by Japanese re­
searchers in the early 1980s according to the needs of daily production.
It has been widely studied because of the advantages of simple theory
and stable output waveform. Literature [1] overcame the limitation
that the repeated control delay part was a known integer, and proposed
the ability to improve frequency adaptation at a fixed frequency to
achieve the purpose of completely compensating for harmonic current.
Literature [2] proposed a control strategy based on repetitive control
and PI control. This method improved the output current waveform and
the dynamic response speed, and reduced the harmonic content. In [3],
the state observation of the controlled object was studied, and the de­
sign method of the improved repeated theory controller with inter­
ference characteristics was proposed. Literature [4] studied the influ­
ence of internal modulus Q on the amplitude-frequency characteristics
of the system according to the structure of the system, and proved that
the introduction of Q can greatly improve the stability of the system.
This paper proposes to use the repetitive control method to elim­
inate the periodic interference in the output voltage, and the equivalent
input disturbance (EID) is applied to eliminate the remaining non-
periodic interference. This method greatly improves the reliability of
the system and makes the system itself or other adjustment link devices
operate stably.
2. Three-level inverter principle
A diode-clamped three-level inverter is used in this paper as shown
in Fig. 1. The advantage of this topology is that the switching loss is
small, and the reactive power control can be realized. At the same time,
since the withstand voltage level of the switch tube is doubled com­
pared with the conventional two-level, the waveform quality of the
output voltage is better [5]. The diode-clamped three-level inverter
consists of three bridge arms from the Fig. 1, each of which consists of
two clamp diodes, four power diodes and four freewheeling diodes.
Capacitors C1 and C2 are the same size, so the voltage on each capacitor
is Udc/2. The midpoint of the two series devices is connected to the
midpoint of the DC-side capacitor through the clamp diode, so that the
output voltage is clamped at the midpoint of the DC side. The three-
level inverter SVPWM method based on 60° coordinate system can
achieve the better PWM wave of the output of three-level voltage in this
paper. The characteristic of this method is that it can greatly simplify

⁎
Corresponding author at: The Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Bayin Guoleng Vocational and Technical College, Korla 841000, China.
E-mail address: y99ygl@ysu.edu.cn (G. Yang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2020.113837
Received 28 May 2020; Accepted 18 July 2020
Available online 31 October 2020
0026-2714/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
G. Yang, et al. Microelectronics Reliability 114 (2020) 113837

A
La i oa Z a
Sa1 Sb1 Sc1
ia
Lb i ob Z b
B N
C1 Vdc1 Sa2 Sb2 Sc2 ib
D1 D3 D5 Lc
Vdc C i oc Z c
n ic
C2 Sa3 Sb3 Sc3
Ca Cb Cc
Vdc2 D4 D6 u oa u ob u oc
D2
Sa4 Sb4 Sc4

Fig. 1. Diode-clamped three-level inverter circuit.

Fig. 2. Repetitive control block diagram.

D( z )
+ E( z) + - Y ( z)
+ z-N zk Kr S ( z) P( z )
R( z ) +
- +

Q( z ) z - N

compensation is as Fig. 2.
Phase (deg) Magnitude (dB)

20
As seen in Fig. 2, the repetitive control includes a positive feedback
10
0
-10
-20 link for periodic accumulation of the input signal. The periodic delay
-30
-40 link Z−N plays a leading role that is, the signal feedback of the previous
-50
0 cycle is applied to the next cycle [6]. The advance link ZK is used to
-45 achieve phase compensation for the system. When the K value is 5, the
-90 compensation effect is ideal. S(z) is mainly used to achieve the system
amplitude requirements. A combination of a notch filter and a low-pass
-135
-180 2
10 104 105 filter is proposed to meet the design requirements, that is, S
Frequency(Hz)
(z) = S1(z)·S2(z), wherein the notch filter S1(z) is used to eliminate the
Fig. 3. BODE map of P(z). resonance peak of the system, low-pass filter S2(z) is used to achieve
high frequency attenuation of the system.
Due to the symmetry of the three-phase circuit, it can be simplified
Phase (deg) Magnitude (dB)

0
-100 into an equivalent single-phase circuit. The expression of the second-
order LC filter single-phase circuit is discretized:
-200
-300 0.1745z + 0.159
P(z) =
900 z2 1.425z + 0.7585 (1)
720
640
360 The BODE of the discretized system is as Fig. 3:
180 It can be seen from the Fig. 3 that the controlled object P(z) has a
0
-180 distinct resonance peak. In order to eliminate the resonance peak of P
102 103 104 105
(z), it is generally selected S1(z) as a comb filter F(z) [7]:
Frequency(Hz)
amzm + am 1zm 1+ + a 0 + am 1zm 1 + amz m
Fig. 4. The compensated BODE chart. F(z) =
2am + 2am 1+ + a 0 (2)

the SVPWM algorithm and accurately determine the vector triangle in Z5 +2+Z 5
S1 (z) = F(z) =
which the reference voltage vector falls. 4 (3)
Design of S2(z): the cutoff frequency is ωn = 6100 rad/s. In order to
prevent its own resonance again, the damping ratio is 0.8 [8]. Then you
3. Principle and design of repetitive control can get:
0.1339z + 0.09654
Repetitive control is a control strategy to improve the accuracy of S2 (z) =
z2 1.146z + 0.3764 (4)
the servo system which is based on the internal model principle. The
purpose is to eliminate the recurring harmonics in each cycle voltage, The calculated compensation link is applied to the system to obtain
that is, the control system firstly obtains the error signal of the previous the BODE diagram of Z5S(z)P(z). It can be seen from Fig. 4 that the
cycle and gives correction according to the feedback signal. The signal amplitude and phase effects of the whole system are better compen­
is then adjusted in the next cycle. sated below 6100 rad/s, and the gain and phase basically meet the
Because the control system contains parameters varying with time, design requirements.
the amplitude and phase of the system are changed, which is not con­ To verify the stability of the system, we simplified the block diagram
ducive to control. In order to get a stable control model, it is required to of the repetitive control to Fig. 5:
design a compensation link. The repetitive control structure with It is easy to conclude that the links 1 − P(z) and 1 − Q(z)z−N are

2
G. Yang, et al. Microelectronics Reliability 114 (2020) 113837

Fig. 5. Simplified schematic of repeated control.

4. Equivalent input disturbance control

Magnitude (dB)

-10 It can be seen that the repetitive control can only effectively sup­
press the periodic interference in the output voltage waveform. For the
-20
non-periodic disturbances existing in the system, now the EID estimator
-30 is proposed to use to eliminate the interference. EID estimator is an
active interference controller. The principle is to estimate the equiva­
Fig. 6. System stability verification.
lent disturbance by using the detection value and introduce it into the
input of the system. Then, a reasonable controller is designed to sup­
600 press the influence of input on the system performance. This estimator
400 has the advantages of small calculation amount, simple and reliable
200
implementation method [10]. Fig. 8 shows the principle of equivalent
U/V

0
input disturbance control.
Where Kr is the state feedback gain used to suppress the effects of
-200
-400
interference, L is the state observer which is used to observe the state of
-600
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2 the system, and F(s) is a low-pass filter used to estimate the true in­
t/s
terference. The designed state observer can observe the state of the
Fig. 7. Repetitive control of the output voltage after adding disturbance. system well. When the system reaches stability, x (t) can respond well to
x(t). From uf (t) = kr (r(t) y(t)) + kp x (t) , when there is interference,
the output y(t) changes, causing the control amount to go in the op­
posite direction, so that the effect of effectively suppressing interference
stable. According to the small gain principle, if the gain of the open-
can be achieved [11].
loop transfer function z-N(Q(z) − P(z)S(z)) of the feedback loop is al­
ways less than 1, the system must be stable [9]. The amplitude-fre­
quency characteristic curve of Q-SP is shown in Fig. 6. Its amplitude is
5. Repetitive control based on equivalent input disturbance
basically below 0 dB, indicating that the repeating controller is stable at
this time.
The repetitive control is combined with the EID control to obtain the
The performance of the repetitive control is verified on MATLAB. It
Fig.9. The working principle is as follows: the disturbance of the ca­
can be seen from Fig. 7 that at 0.1 s, the disturbances with frequency of
pacitor current is reduced by the equivalent input disturbance esti­
100 Hz and 150 Hz are added to the control system. Due to the delay of
mator, and the output value is integrated by the capacitance to obtain a
repetitive control, the output voltage starts to adjust after one cycle,
voltage value, which is compared with the feedback voltage value as an
and the repetitive control ends at 0.12 s from Fig. 7. At the end of the
input of the EID. That is to say, by taking the difference between the
repetitive control, the harmonics are well suppressed.
capacitor voltage and the given value, through the state observer and
the low-pass filter, the equivalent interference de(t) of the interference

Fig. 8. Equivalent input disturbance control schematic.

3
G. Yang, et al. Microelectronics Reliability 114 (2020) 113837

Fig. 9. Repetitive control schematic based on equivalent input disturbance.

input d(t) is obtained, thereby achieving the purpose of controlling the shows that after the system is repeatedly adjusted by the repetitive
voltage. control of the equivalent input disturbance, the system outputs a stable
waveform, indicating that the system interference is suppressed.
Through the above simulation results, it can be concluded that the
6. Simulation and experimental waveforms compound control of the repetitive control of the equivalent input
disturbance has the ability to suppress the periodic and non-periodic
When the load changes, the equivalent input disturbance is com­ interference of the system, thereby making the system run smoothly
bined with the repetitive control to obtain the waveform and THD of and improving its reliability.
the output voltage as shown in Figs. 10 and 11. From the above ana­ Comparing Fig. 13 with Fig. 14 from the experiment, it is found that
lysis, the amplitude and phase of the whole system are well compen­ the harmonic content of the closed-loop system output voltage is sig­
sated below 6100 rad/s. It can be seen that when the load changes, the nificantly lower than that of the open-loop system. After closed-loop
system can also make timely adjustments, output a stable voltage, and adjustment, the output voltage waveform of the inverter is more stable
make the system operate normally and stably, which verifies the ra­ and less fluctuating, which can improve the output characteristics of the
tionality of the design. inverter and basically meet the design requirements.
Fig. 12 shows the disturbance rejection capability of the repetitive
control based on equivalent input disturbance controller. Figure (a)
1.4
shows that the output waveform contains periodic and aperiodic in­
1.2
terference after the control system adds disturbance. Figure (b) shows 1
that after the control system is modulated by the equivalent input
0.8
disturbance estimator, the aperiodic interference in the system is ba­ 0.6
sically eliminated, but there is still periodic disturbance. Figure (c) 0.4
0.2
30 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
20 iiaa iib iicc
10 (a) The output of the system with disturbance
I/A

0 1.4
-10
-20 1.2
-30
1
300 u a ub uc 0.8
200 0.6
100
U/V

0 0.4
-100 0.2
-200
-300 0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
t/s (b) The output of the system when adding an equivalent input
Fig. 10. Waveform of output voltage during load switching. disturbance estimator
1.4
1.2
Fundamental(60Hz ) =230.3 , THD = 0 . 42%
Mag (% of Fundamental)

0.3 1
0 . 25 0.8
0.6
0.2
0.4
0.15 0.2
0.1 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0.05
(c) The output of the system when adding repetitive control of
0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Harmonic order
equivalent input disturbance

Fig. 11. The THD of the output voltage. Fig. 12. Verification of repetitive control based on equivalent input dis­
turbance.

4
G. Yang, et al.
frequency
Duty ratio
Fig. 13. Open-loop output line voltage and filtered waveform.
amplitude
Fig. 14. Closed loop output line voltage and filtered waveform.
7. Conclusion
Aiming at the periodic and aperiodic disturbances in the inverter
system, the paper completes the control of the system by the equivalent
input disturbance estimator combined with the repetitive control of the
composite control method. A compound double closed-loop simulation
model is built in Matlab. The simulation results verify the rationality
and effectiveness of the design. And the experiments show that this
control method can achieve good voltage quality and greatly improve
the reliability of the system.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ­
ence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
Project supported by Natural Science Foundation of Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region (2019D01A01).
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