Digital Controller Design for Fourth-Order Soft-

Switching Boost Converter

Mummadi Veerachary
Dept. of Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi, New Delhi
INDIA

Abstract- In this paper a digital voltage-mode controller is
designed for a fourth-order soft-switching boost converter. The
proposed converter exhibits voltage gain same as that of
conventional boost converter but has lower source current
ripple as compared to it. Additionally, it exhibits reduced switch
transition losses on account of zero voltage transition behavior.
In soft-switching operation it exhibits seven different modes of
operations in one switching cycle and also results in zero-voltage
transition to the switching devices. As there are several
operating modes in one switching cycle the small-signal z-
domain transfer functions are formulated using MATALB based
system identification toolbox, which are then used in the direct
digital controller design. A sisotool of matlab is adopted to
arrive at final digital voltage-mode controller. Closed-loop
converter performance is determined for a 12 to 28 V, 50 W
prototype in simulation and then compared with experimental
measurements. Experimental measurements are in close
agreement with simulations.

I. INTRODUCTION
witch-mode power supplies demands more accurate
and fast regulation of load voltage since they are being
extensively used as a source of power for critical medical
equipments/instruments, space crafts, computer processors,
communication systems, hybrid vehicles, electronic goods
and gadgets, etc. [1]-[2]. This widespread application may be
credited to implementation of digital control techniques and
availability of high performance, low cost FPGA/DSP.
Digital control techniques have following advantages over
their analog counterpart [3]-[4]: (i) possibility of more
advanced and functional control methods which can greatly
improve the dynamic performance of power converter
system, (ii) less susceptibility to parameter variation, (iii)
programmability, (iv) high flexibility, and (v) low power
consumption, etc,. Dc-Dc boosting converters are most
popular for delivering higher load voltages from given low
voltage source. Although, the conventional boost converter is
capable of stepping-up of voltages and meeting the load
demand at a predefined voltage levels, but (i) its full load
efficiency is low on account of higher switching losses, (ii)
higher source current ripple, and (iii) extreme duty ratio
operation unable to yield expected voltage gain, and
efficiency requirements etc,. To overcome some of these
limitations a fourth-order boost converter is proposed [4].
Although, this converter gives improved performance with
reference to the source current ripple, but its switching losses
are high on account of hard transition. This becomes even
more problematic in case switching frequency is increased to
further higher value.
Recently, soft-switching techniques are coming-up to
overcome the excessive switching losses occurring in the
conventional hard-switched dc-dc converters and to realize
higher efficiencies for the dc-dc converter at full-load
conditions [5]-[6]. A high gain soft-switching boost converter
topology is reported in the literature [7]. Here, the voltage
multiplier network not only serves as voltage amplification
but also results in soft-switching for the MOSFETs. It gives
higher boosting ratios at the expense of decreased efficiency.
Analysis of zero-voltage transition based boost converter is
reported in ref[3]. Furthermore, ZVT structures for the
remaining six basic dc-dc converters also described.

However, there is not enough literature covering the
development of soft-switching schemes for higher order boost
converters such as fourth-order converters. Furthermore, very
few papers reported dealing the design aspects of digital
controllers for such kinds of converters. In order to bridge
this gap, this paper presents some investigations on (i)
realization of zero voltage transition feature for the fourth-
order boost converter, and (ii) digital controller design for the
fourth-order soft-switching boost converter (FSOBC), which
ensures load voltage regulation while rejecting structured/
unstructured uncertainties in the converter including source
and load disturbances. Although analogue controllers are well
established for switch-mode dc-dc converters, digital
controllers offer many advantages over their analogue
counterparts. Due to latest developments in microcontrollers/
digital signal processors technology, there has been a growing
interest in the application of digital controllers for high
frequency conversion systems and low to medium power dc-
dc converters, due to the low price-to-performance ratio for
implementing complex control strategies.

Fig. 1. Circuit diagram of the soft-switching fourth-order boost converter.
S
978-1-4673-2605-6/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE
Table I. Status on the devices in one switching cycle.
Mode Time
duration
Primary
switch
Auxiliary
switch
Primary
diode
Aux.
diode
I T
0
<t<T
1
OFF ON ON OFF
II T
1
<t<T
2
OFF ON OFF OFF
III T
2
<t<T
3
OFF ON OFF OFF
IV T
3
<t<T
4
OFF OFF OFF ON
V T
4
<t<T
5
ON OFF OFF ON
VI T
5
<t<T
6
ON OFF OFF OFF
VII T
6
<t<T
0
OFF OFF ON OFF

Several compensator design approaches have been
reported in the literature for Op-Amp or IC based analogue
controllers. However, in the case of digital controller design,
two main approaches [4] are widely used, are: (i) digital
redesign method (DRM), (ii) direct digital design method
(DDDM). In the first case, the compensator is designed in the
conventional way by using s-domain transfer functions
together with linear system theory and the resulting
compensator is transformed into the digital domain using
appropriate z-transformations. On the other hand, in DDDM,
the compensator design is carried out in the z-domain itself
and hence there is no need for s to z-domain transformation.
In view of these features here DDDM is used for FSOBC
digital controller design.

II. DISCRETE-TIME MODELING OF FOURTH-ORDER
SOFT-SWITCHING BOOST CONVERTER
The fourth-order soft-switching boost converter is shown in
Fig. 1. In comparison to the conventional boost converter, this
circuit topology uses two additional energy storage elements,
one capacitor and one inductor. To realize soft-switching a
zero-voltage transition (ZVT) network is added as shown in
the circuit diagram. This ZVT network consists of auxiliary
switch, diode and resonating tank. On account of ZVT
network the proposed converter exhibits seven operating
modes in one switching cycle and various devices ON/OFF
status is indicated in Table I. Equivalent circuits can easily be
established with the help of Table I and in each case the
circuit contains L, C elements connected either to source side,
load side, or circulating the energy within the tank elements
through the main or auxiliary switches. Writing the circuit
equations and then solving gives the time durations for each
mode of operation, necessary and sufficient conditions for
achieving the ZVT performance.

The voltage transformation ratio of this SFOBC has an
identical form to the conventional boost converter
0
1 (1 ) .
g
V V D = Due to soft-switching operation this
FOSBC undergoes seven modes of operations in one cycle
and during some of these modes the converter circuit is under
quasi-resonance. In view of this the conventional state-space
modelling can not applied directly. For modelling such kind
of converters, and the corresponding resonant behaviour, a
generalized state-space method has been reported in literature
[9]. However, this model formulation methodology assumes
variables associated with the soft-switching resonant tank (L
r
,
C
r
) as input control variables, rather than as state variables. In
view of this, the accuracy of resulting model is low.
Furthermore, the accuracy of the model obtained through this
methodology depends on: (i) the accuracy of time durations
for each sub interval, obtained through the expressions which
are developed after including simplifying assumptions, (ii)
depending on loading conditions the number of operating
modes and or the sequence of modes of operations might
change, and (iii) increased complexity in the discrete-time
model formulation with increase in number of operating
modes. To improve the model accuracy, through generalized
state-space method, a larger number of harmonics needs to be
included. This increases the transfer function order and
complex in the mathematical analysis. To overcome some of
these problems, system identification technique is employed
here for discrete-time model formulation [7]. Application of
this system identification tool to the resonant converters has
certain advantages, of which the most important features are:
(i) the internal structure of the converter and its operating
modes need not be known in advance as long as one can
obtain a satisfactory statistical distribution of the data, (ii) this
approach is very effective at generating a reduced order
model to represent a dc-dc converter undergoing several
operating modes, and (iii) this method is particularly useful in
dc-dc converters where there are many modes of operation
and difficulty in finding the duty ratio of each mode
operation, etc.

Although several system identification tools available for
model formulation, here a Box-Jenkins methodology is used
for finding the z-transfer functions of the proposed converter
[7]. For the parameters, listed in Table II, the converter circuit
diagram is formulated in the SIMULINK and then the
response of the load voltage is generated for a given range of
perturbation of duty ratio parameter. For the voltage-mode
controller design the sensitivity of load voltage against duty
ratio variation is needed in addition to the operating point for
the specified parameters. For the 12 to- 28 V applications
the ideal duty ratio is 0.572. In order to obtain control to
output z-transfer function the duty ratio needs to be sweeping
in the range 0.35 ~ 0.75 which includes the nominal operating
point duty ratio of 0.572. Taking these boundaries, equally
spaced intermediate points with step time equal to the
sampling time period, T
s
=1/f
s
, are generated using a random
generator. To determine the converter discrete-time transfer
function, the load voltage sample point and the perturbation
duty ratio signals are passed on to the system identification
toolbox of matlab [8]. In this toolbox, the user has the option
to choose linear parametric model formulation methodology
and its fitment order for the given input-output data condition.
After having decided these parameters the model is estimated
through any one of the tools discussed above and its accuracy
is verified by residual analysis. The estimated model
represents the small-signal dynamics of the FSOBC system if
the residual of the model is within the allowable confidence
interval. The control-to-output transfer function, G
vd
(z), is
obtained from the system identification tool for a 50 Watt
FSOBC is
3 2
4 3 2
( ) (0.5157 1.452 1.362 0.4233)
( )

( 3.34 4.213 2.395 0.5227) ( )

o
vd
v z z z z
G z
z z z z d z
+
= =
+ +
(1)
A two-pole two-zero digital controller is designed for this
converter and it is:
1 2
3
( )( )
( )
( 1)( )
vc
k z a z a
G z
z z a

=

(2)
where a
1
, a
2
, a
3
respectively are zero and pole locations in z-
plane.

III. DIGITAL VOLTAGE-MODE CONTROLLER DESIGN
Several single-loop controlling techniques are reported in
literature for power supplies. Each of these controlling
techniques has their own advantages and limitations. In
applications needing load voltage regulation single-loop
voltage-mode control strategy is simple and widely used
scheme to achieve reasonably good dynamic response. In
view of this a single-loop voltage-mode digital controller is
discussed in this section. Taking the above transfer functions
and using the control block diagram, Fig. 2, digital controller
is designed. The control-loop stability is assessed by the
loopgain, defined by eqn. 3, where the digital delay in the
loop is also included.

vmc de vd
T(z)=G (z)G (z)G (z) (3)

The digital controller has been designed using the sisotool
of matlab and the pole-zero locations have been decided
based on the gain margin (GM), phase margin (PM)
requirements. The final design trade-off pole-zero locations
is: a
1
=0.78, a
2
=0.98, a
3
=0.36, k=0.8466 and this design is
resulted in the stability margins: GM=9 dB, PM=62
0
and
crossover frequency of 460 Hz. The final resulting loopgain
bode plot is shown in Fig. 3.

IV. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
A 30 Watt prototype FSOBC system has been designed to
verify the ZVT performance of the proposed converter and its
controller regulation capability. The converter is supplied
from a 12 V battery and the desired load voltage is 28 V. The
parameters of the designed converter to meet the
specifications (I
L1
<20% V
o
<5%) are listed in Table II.
Zero-voltage transition soft-switching performance of the
proposed SFOBC is verified through PSIM simulations [9]
and for illustration purpose steady-state current and voltage
waveforms of main/ auxiliary switch (S
M
/ S
A
), and diode
(D
M
/ D
A
) are shown in Figs. 4 to 6. It is clear from these
waveforms that the main switch is turning-ON only after its
drain to source voltage is dropping to zero, i.e ZVT turn-ON.
Furthermore, the main diode D
M
is turning-OFF at zero
current switching (ZCS). In order to verify the simulation
results a 12 -to- 28 V, 30 W laboratory prototype has been
designed. The digital control law has been implemented on
microcontroller board dsPIC30F6010 [10], where sampling of
signals has been done at 50 kHz. The load voltage is sensed
and brought down into the 0~5 V range and is then passed on
to the onboard ADC of the microcontroller. By applying
inverse z-transform the digital control law, eqn (2), is
transformed into discrete-time control law given by:
3 3
1 2 1 2
( ) (1 ) ( 1) ( 2) ( )
( ) ( 1) ( 2)
d n a d n a d n ke n
k a a e n ka a e n
= + +
+ +
(4)
where d(n), d(n-1) and d(n-2) are the new duty ratios, one-
cycle-before and two-cycles-before, respectively; while e(n),
e(n-1) and e(n-2) are the new error signals, one-cycle-before
and two-cycles-before, respectively. Experimentation has
been performed on SFOBC and the digital controller has been
realized using microcontroller. The converter ZVT
performance has been verified for the expected duty ratio
variations. To demonstrate this ZVT feature, a 12 V supply is
connected to the SFOBC and then various currents / voltage
waveforms have been recorded. Soft-switching OFF-ON
transition under zero voltage turn-ON of the switching
devices (S
A
and S
M
) while zero-current turn-OFF of the
diodes (D
A
and D
M
) as shown in Figs. 4 and 5.
0_ref
v
g
v
0

i
0
v
d

U
e
de
( ) G z
Fig. 2. Block diagram of the closed-loop converter system.
-20
0
20
40
60
80
M
a
g
n
i
t
u
d
e

(
d
B
)


10
0
10
1
10
2
10
3
10
4
10
5
-540
-360
-180
0
180
P
h
a
s
e

(
d
e
g
)
Frequency (Hz)
Gvd
Gca
Loopgain

Fig. 3. Bode plots of converter(blue), compensator(black) and Loopgain(red)
(GM=9 dB, PM=62
0
, fc=460 Hz).
After studying the converter soft-switching performance
the feasibility of the designed digital controller is verified.
For demonstration the closed-loop converter system
regulation capability is tested for: (i) load perturbation from
26 to 13 , (ii) supply voltage change from 10 to 15 V and
the corresponding experimental results are shown in Fig. 7,
where the observations clearly indicate the load voltage
regulation feature against load and source perturbations.


(a) Simulation


(b) Experimentally measured
Fig. 4. Waveform showing ZVS operation of the main switch SM.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper a soft-switching fourth order boost converter
performance has been analyzed. Small-signal z-domain
transfer functions were formulated using system identification
toolbox of the MATLAB, and then used in the direct digital
controller design. Digital voltage-mode controller has been
designed for the proposed converter and its validity is verified
both in simulation and experiment. Theoretical analysis
results were in close agreement experimental measurements.


(a) Simulation


(b) Experimentally measured
Fig. 5. Waveforms showing ZCS operation of the main diode DM.

(a) Simulation

(b) Experimental measurements
Fig. 6. Waveforms of auxiliary switch SA.

(a) Load resistance perturbation (R: 26 13 )

(b) Source voltage perturbation (V
g
: 10 15 V)
Fig. 7. Experimentally measured dynamic response of load voltage.

Table II. Converter parameters.
Power stage
parameter
Value
L
1
50 H
L
2
150 H
L
r
10 H
C
r
10 nF
C
1
100 F
C
2
110 F
f
s
50 kHz
R 26
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