Control of the Direct AC-AC Converter

Yuan Liu Supervisor: Galina Mirzaeva Co-Supervisor: Colin Coates

School of Engineering (Electrical Eng Discipe), The University of Newcastle, Australia

1. Introduction
Electricity is one of the most used energy sources in this world today. And alternating current (AC)
is also a form of electricity that is very easy to obtain in life. Depending on the purpose of use or
production, AC power obtained directly from the grid may not be sufficient to meet the demand.
Therefore, the conversion of AC power in terms of amplitude, frequency and phase angle becomes
an indispensable part of industrial production.
An intentionally widely used method is the AC-DC-AC conversion system. The structure of this
system can be clearly observed in the figure 1. It is obvious that this structure divides the system b) Construction of output voltage c) Construction of input current
a) Voltage simulation in
into two parts, the rectifier and the inverter. This makes the development of the control strategy SVM Figure 3. Space Vector Modulation
easy. And there is no direct coupling between input and output. The middle DC part also provides a
buffer area for both sides. And when the rectifier side also uses fully controlled elements, the power
factor on the input side also becomes controllable. However, the disadvantage of this structure is
2) Model Predictive Control
also obvious: in the DC part, a very large capacitor is required to maintain the DC system bus
Model predictive control (MPC) is a control strategy that has been developed very recently to MC. Its
voltage and to provide an energy storage function. This greatly increases the physical size of the
basic principle is to calculate which switching state is closest to the reference in the next step at the
system.
beginning of the current sample period, given the known system parameters. And how to calculate the
proximity, a cost function is used. When building a cost function, both input and output can be put in at
the same time. In this way both sides can be controllable, and the focus of the control strategy can be
adjusted by adjusting the weights. The control block diagram is as follows:

Figure 1. AC-DC-AC converter system

Matrix Converter (MC) is a direct AC-AC converter system. Its inputs and outputs are sinusoidal, and
it can operate in four quadrant. Its structure was first mentioned in 1979. It wasn’t practical until the
Figure 4. Model predictive control configuration
1980s that it was proven to be useful for AC power conversion. In the next two decades, it developed
rapidly. MPC can achieve an accurate reference tracking. However, the accuracy must be based on a very short
sample period, otherwise system will vary too much, resulting in inaccurate predictions. And this high
sample frequency puts high requirements on the whole control system as well as the equipment.

4. New Method development

MPC’s performance leads to a tide of MC control strategy. How to reduce the frequency requirement of
MPC becomes a popular topic of related research.

1) Modulated MPC
Modulated MPC (MMPC) selects the top four ranked
vectors when performing the MPC calculation. Then
the sample period is divided into unequal parts in a
manner like SVM. The calculation result of cost
function is used to gain the applied time of each
vector. The application method refers to the following
Figure 2. A conversion system with matrix converter
figure 5.
This can greatly increase the sample time length,
It can be seen from the figure 2 that the MC is composed of nine bidirectional switches. The DC part which also reduces the frequency. However, this
is removed from this configuration, so it improves the energy conversion efficiency of the whole approach also sacrifices the excellent harmonic
system and also reduces the system volume. performance of MPC. So there is still potential for
improvement in this method.
There are two restrictions on its use: avoiding short-circuiting of the input voltage and avoiding open-
circuiting of the output current. So there are 27 switching states that can be used. Eighteen of them
Figure 5. MMPC flow chart
have two phase of output connected to the same phase of input. These are called active vectors. The
2) New Modulated MPC
other three have all three outputs connected to the same input phase. These six vectors are called zero
This strategy also divides the sample period into several parts. However, the period is divided into
vector. There are six three-phase outputs that are all connected to different inputs. This distinction is
several equal intervals (5 for example). The MPC calculation is then performed 5 times. Each time the
crucial for the control strategy invocation.
closest switch state is obtained, the reference is subtracted by 0.2 times this vector and then extended
(to avoid that only the second half of the period is selected with zero vectors). The MPC calculation is
then performed again. The detailed flow as well as the schematic is shown below.

2. Challenge
MC also brings many challenges. Although the volume has been reduced, the connection between
input and output has become directly coupled. This makes the change of operation on either side
directly reflected on the other side. For the output dynamic control system, how to maintain the
power factor for the input side has become a very important control priority.

3. Control Strategy
There are currently many directions of control strategy development for MC. Two widely used
strategies as representatives will be introduced. These two strategies are also related to the ones that I
am working on.
1) Space Vector Modulation
Space vector control (SVM) was proposed in the 1990s. The basic idea of SVM is to use the volt-
second balance principle to synthesize a reference vector using two standard switching state vectors.
Let’s take a voltage example to show how SVM works (in figure 3 a)). The reference is simulate by a) New MMPC flow chart b) Illustration of the voltage synthesis
and . The voltage duty cycle depends on the amplitude and phase angle. However, it is more complex Figure 6. New MMPC
for MC, since the input current should also be considered.(shown in figure 3 b) and c)) Thus, four
switch states are chosen and applied in a certain order in one sample period. (shown in figure 4) This choice makes the THD performance better than the former MMPC’s. In practice, it will also
reduce the peak load of the real-time calculation.