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Discrete-time Sliding Mode controller for inverters

Article · June 2010


DOI: 10.1109/SPEEDAM.2010.5542129

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SPEEDAM 2010
International Symposium on Power Electronics,
Electrical Drives, Automation and Motion

Discrete-Time Sliding Mode Controller


for Inverters
L. Schirone*, F. Celani**, M. Macellari*, and A. Schiaratura*
* Sapienza Università di Roma - DIAA, Via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Roma, (Italy)
** Sapienza Università di Roma - DIS, Via L. Ariosto 25, 00185 Roma, (Italy)

Abstract--A Sliding-Mode (SM) technique for inverter variations. [2-6]


control is proposed, where a discrete-time control action is Among nonlinear control techniques for inverters, the
applied to the duty-cycle of a PWM controller. Sliding Mode (SM) technique is interesting because it
The design criteria of the SM controller are discussed intrinsically provides the capability to manage large
and are applied to the design of a sinewave inverter, which
is implemented both as a model in Scicos environment and
variations in the system parameters or in the operating
in a laboratory prototype. A sensitivity analysis of the conditions [7, 8]. Basically, the sliding mode techniques
inverter operation as a function of different choices of allow to independently design the small signal dynamics
parameters is reported. and the large-signal response, providing both a fast
transient response and a smooth response to oscillations
Index Terms—Inverters, Sliding Mode control, Digital of the reference signal.
Control, Power conversion
Typically, SM control is operating in continuous time,
and the control acts on the conduction state of a power
I. INTRODUCTION
switch in real time [8, 9]. In this work a discrete sliding-
Challenging specifications are set on the power quality mode control is applied to the duty-cycle of a PWM
of static inverters in the presence of severe load variations controller, allowing to choose the control sampling
and nonlinearities over a wide range of input voltages. frequency independently of the PWM frequency: high
Stable output frequency, high efficiency, high reliability, switching frequencies allow to increase power density,
and high power density are often expected too [1]. without increasing the required computation speed for the
When conventional PWM controllers are used, controller.
performance may be impaired because the control is In section II the principles of SM control applied to a
designed on the basis of a small-signal model of the buck sinewave inverter are discussed. Section III reports
power stages; however, the model is subject to change a sensitivity analysis of the inverter operation with
under the large variations of operating conditions that are respect to different choices of controller parameters, on
typical of several application environments. Thus, various the basis of both experimental results, obtained by a
advanced linear and nonlinear control algorithms have laboratory prototype, and simulations by a model
been suggested to improve the dynamic response of developed in Scicos environment.
inverters and their robustness with respect to parametric

Fig. 1. Sliding-mode controlled buck inverter.

978-1-4244-4987-3/10/$25.00 ©2010 IEEE


1102
action when the state is appreciably far from the sliding
II. SM CONTROL surface. When the surface is reached, the state variables
For the sake of simplicity, the discussion will refer to a direct toward the equilibrium (x = 0) following the
single-phase buck converter tracking a sinusoidal surface as a reference path. This way, as they remain on
reference, as shown in Fig. 1. The switching action is or close-to it, the equivalent trajectory can be
provided by a bridge of switching transistors, whose duty approximated to S = 0. Thus, the small-signal dynamics
cycle d is directly computed by the controller and emitted are assigned by choosing the sliding coefficients [1].
as a control signal u .
Under continuous conduction mode (CCM) operation
the state variables can be expressed as:

x1 Vref  E Vo

³
E§V uVcc  Vo ·¸
x2 x1 Vref  ¨ o 
C ¨© RL L ¸
¹ (1)

x3
³ x1dt
Fig. 2. State trajectory
where C, L is and RL are the capacitance, the
inductance and the load resistance, respectively. Vi and In order to obtain such a behavior the following
EVO are the input and the sensed output voltage. For the conditions should be satisfied:
definition of duty cycle, the control signal is 0 < u < 1. A. Hitting condition:
The system is described by the state-space model:
regardless of the initial condition, the state of the
x t A x t  B u t  D (2) system will always move toward the sliding surface;
B. Existence condition:
with
after the sliding surface is approached or crossed first,
the state trajectory will remain in close proximity to it.
ª 0 1 0º ª 0 º
« 1 1 » « EVi » C. Stability condition:
A « 0» B « »
« LC RLC » « LC » the state trajectory will eventually converge to the
«¬ 1 0 0»¼ ¬ 0 ¼ origin.
(3)
ª 0 º
«Vref Vref » It can be demonstrated [10, 11] that the hitting and the
D «   Vref » existence conditions can be both achieved if :
« CL CRL »
«¬ 0 »¼ S S  0 (7)
and can be related to the discrete-time plant: Dote and Hoft [12] first proposed an equivalent form
x k  1 A' x k  B' u k  D k (4)
of the continuous reaching condition in the discrete-time
domain:
where T is the sampling period and:
>S k  1  S k @ S k  0 (8)
A' = T ( I +A ), B' = T B, D' = T D (5)
This equation sets a necessary condition for Sliding
The basic idea of SM control [7, 10] is designing a Mode, but an additional condition is required [13] in
control law such that in response to any perturbation the order to guarantee an asymptotic convergence to the
state of the system moves toward the equilibrium x = 0 sliding plane S = 0:
following a predetermined sliding surface as a reference
path: S k  1  S k (9)

S = cT x (6) The control design is completed by assuming a


switching function u(S), and then imposing the (7) or the
where x is the state of the system and cT is a suitable
(8), (9) conditions in order to obtain a boundary for the ci
row vector. The ci coefficients are usually referred to as
coefficients [1].
the sliding coefficients.
Thus, the large-signal dynamics can be assigned by
The classical method of implementing a SM controller
imposing a suitable reaching law, dominating the control
is based on the switching function:

1103
sliding mode after large perturbations.
1
u 1  sign ( S ) (10) Using (4) and (6), the incremental change of S(k) can
2 be expressed as:

where X is the logic state of the converter’s power S k  1  S k cT x k  1  cT x k


switch. When directly implemented in an analog system,
cT A x k  cTB u k  cTD  cT x k (13)
this control law provides converters that are switched at
uncontrolled and ideally infinite frequency [7, 1]. On the qT S k
other hand, in order to limit dissipation in the switches
and in the magnetic cores, to limit EMI generation and/or Solving for the control u(k) gives the control law:
simplify the design of input and output filters, several
approaches have been proposed to set a limit to the u k  cTb 1>cTA x k  1  qT cTx k  cTD@ (14)
switching frequency and to confine it in a tight range. 1
Most converters adopt the Hysteresis Modulation (HM) Using the equation (14) provides the sliding mode
method [1] to limit maximum frequency [8,14,15] and (hitting and existence conditions) but still leaves a certain
some of them stabilize the frequency by incorporating degree of freedom about the system dynamics close to
some timing function [16, 17] or adaptive control [18] in equilibrium, i.e. about the choice of the sliding surface S.
the controller.
Constant switching-frequency SM controllers can also For this purpose Tan [11] proposed to bind the
be obtained by using Pulse Width Modulation PWM coefficients of the c matrix in (6) to the desired control
instead of HM [19 and references therein]: one of the bandwidth and damping ratio. The approach is exact for
switch transitions is synchronous to a clock signal, while 2nd order continuous systems but can be extended to
the time of the other transition is modulated by the SM discrete-time systems through the concept of equivalent
controller. Typically this task is carried on by means of continuous-time system: when the sampling frequency is
fast analog circuitry, emitting a gate signal to toggle the high enough (at least 10 times) than the dominating pole
switch every time the surface S = 0 is crossed. of the controlled system, it can be demonstrated that they
behave in a quite similar way.
On the other hand, it is possible to set the duty cycle G
For the system in (1) in the sliding-mode condition
for every switching period of a PWM controller [10] on (S = 0) the equation relating the dynamic response of the
the basis of the value of the state variables at the system to the sliding coefficients is [11]:
beginning of each sampling period. This way, a duty-ratio

³
based SM controller is obtained. As a matter of fact, it is dx1
c1x1  c2  c3 x1 dt 0 (15)
well known that the discrete control input X, directly dt
linked to the gate signal, can be theoretically replaced by
a smooth function of the discrete control pulses known as which can be rearranged into:
the equivalent control signal Xeq [7]. It can be
d 2 x1 c dx c
demonstrated [1, 10] that, as the sampling frequency  1 1  3 x1 0 (16)
tends to infinity, the resulting state trajectory tends to be dt 2 c2 dt c2
exactly equivalent to an ideal SM operation. This can be easily rewritten according to the standard
form of the equation of a second-order system:
In order to design a discrete-time controller, based on
the duty-ratio control, we found convenient to use a d 2 x1 dx1
switching function different from (10), derived from the  2 ]Zn  Zn2 x1 0 (17)
reaching law approach originally proposed in [20]. dt 2 dt
It can be easily seen that the (8) and (9) conditions are where ] is the damping ratio and Zn the undamped
always satisfied if : natural frequency. By substitution in the (17) we obtain
S k  1  S k qT S k (11) the desired design equations:

c1
1- qT > 0 (12) 2 ]Zn
c2
where T is the sampling period, and q is a parameter (18)
c3
such that 1- qT > 0 [20]. Eqq. (11) and (12) clearly show Z2n
that the parameter q sets the speed of recovery of the c2

1
Thus, the ] and Zn parameters can be easily chosen
If this is the case, strictly speaking the controller should be
addressed as quasi-sliding-mode (QSM) controller. Nevertheless, as all
according to well-understood design rules to achieve the
practical power converters are frequency-limited it is common practice desired overshoot and convergency rate. For example, a
to simply address them by the general term "SM controllers".

1104
critically damped response is obtained when ] = 0.7. If
this is the case, it is well known that the bandwidth of the
controller's response coincides with Zn and the settling
time after a step input is close to 5/Zn. [1].

III. SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS AND DESIGN


The criteria for designing the parameters as a function
of the reference frequency f0 and of the requirements on
the transient response will be discussed in this section. (a)
A laboratory prototype of the buck inverter with a
discrete sliding mode controller was developed. It was
based on a TMS320 DSP, providing enough computing
power to test sampling rates up to 200 kHz. The digital
approach allowed to obtain analytically the x2 state
variable as
x1 k  x1 k  1
x2 k x1 k (19)
T
avoiding to use a specific current sensor. (b)
In Fig. 3 the output voltage and current waveforms
and the related FFT spectrum are reported for the inverter Figure 3. (a) Output waveforms (red = voltage (V), pink = current
operating in the following conditions: (A/5)) and (b) the related FFT.

Vref = 16 cos (2 S fo t), fo= 400 Hz, VCC = 28V, L = 40PH,


C = 35PF, R = 4 :.
It is possible to observe that the waveform spectrum is
characterized by a quite small THD, with the highest The design process starts with the choice of the
harmonics smaller by 30 dB than the fundamental at 400 characteristic frequencies of the system.
Hz. The control bandwidth fBW is set by the application.
Typical specifications about supply systems allow
The DSP allowed to easily modify the control law in
order to analyse the system sensitivity to different design transient of the order of milliseconds, corresponding to
choices. The sensitivity analysis was also extended to fBW of the order of a few kHz. Nonetheless, in the specific
application to inverters, the lower limit to fBW is also
parameters not easy to be experimentally modified,
related to the frequency f0 of the reference sinusoid which
taking advantage of a model of the system developed in
has to be continuously tracked by the controller,
the Scilab environment.

Graphic 1 Graphic 1 Graphic 1 Graphic 1

15
10 10 10

10

5 5 5

0
y

0
y

0
y

-5 -5
-5

-5

-10 -10
-10 -10

0.000 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006


0.000 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006 0.000 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006 0.000 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006
t
t t t

Graphic 1 Graphic 1 Graphic 1 Graphic 1

1.0 0.8 1.0

0.8
0.8 0.8
0.6
0.6
0.6 0.6
0.4
0.4 0.4 0.4

0.2
0.2 0.2
0.2

0.0
y

0.0 0.0
y

0.0
y

-0.2 -0.2
-0.2 -0.2

-0.4 -0.4
-0.4 -0.4
-0.6 -0.6

-0.6
-0.8 -0.6
-0.8

-1.0 -0.8
-0.8 -1.0
0.000 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006
0.000 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006 0.007 0.000 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006
t 0.000 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006
t t
t

BW = 1200 BW = 1600 BW = 2000 BW = 3000

Figure 4. Output waveforms obtained for different values of the controller bandwidth, fBW , while keeping fLC = 4200 Hz and f0 = 400 Hz, fPWM = 200
KHz. Upper curves: output waveforms. Lower curves: error

1105
as a too-low fBW can limit the tracking accuracy than the switching frequency can be used, enabling
around zero crossings. On the other hand, the upper to use a multisampling approach [21]. On the contrary,
limit to fBW depends on the resonance frequency of the when an high switching frequency is required in order
LC tank, f LC 1 2S LC . As clearly shown in fig. 4, to reduce the converter size but millisecond transients
are allowed and/or the speed of controller is a limiting
a good trade-off can be found as:
factor, it is possible to sample the output voltage at a
fLC /2 = fBW = 10 f0 (20) frequency lower than the switching frequency and to
use the same duty-cycle for several consecutive PWM
The switching frequency fPWM has to be chosen on periods [6].
the basis of a trade off between the requirement to As already stated, the system dynamics with respect
reduce the size of reactive components (pushing for to large perturbations are ruled by the q parameter in
high fPWM ) and the need to reduce the switching losses (11). The switch-on transients shown in Fig. 5 for
(pushing for low fPWM). A lower limit was found as: different q's clearly show this property. The figure puts
2 in evidence that appreciable impairments of the
4 f LC waveforms occur when qT larger than 0.5 are used. On
f PWM ! (21)
f0 the other hand, this choice allows to reduce transients
duration.
This criterion was experimentally verified for The transient response of the system was also
different choices of fLC and f0. evaluated by means of a strongly non-linear load,
The sampling frequency of the discrete-time control imposing at every period fast current transients with
system is typically set fSa = fPWM . On the other hand, amplitude of 6 dB and slew rate about 0.4 A/Ps. In the
when the transient response is an issue and the power waveforms shown in Fig. 5 it is possible to observe that
switch is not fast enough, a sampling frequency larger

qT = 0.1 qT = 0.5 qT = 0.9

Figure 5. Switch-on transient as a function of the q parameter.

qT = 0.1 qT = 0.5 qT = 0.9

Figure 6. Response to load variations from 1 A to 4 A as a function of the q parameter (red = voltage, pink = current, bottom = zoom at the load
peak).

1106
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