IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 20, NO.

4, JULY 2005

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Maximum Boost Control of the Z-Source Inverter

Fang Zheng Peng, Fellow, IEEE, Miaosen Shen, Student Member, IEEE, and Zhaoming Qian, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper explores control methods for the Z-source inverter and their relationships of voltage boost versus modulation index. A maximum boost control is presented to produce the maximum voltage boost (or voltage gain) under a given modulation index. The control method, relationships of voltage gain versus modulation index, and voltage stress versus voltage gain are analyzed in detail and veried by simulation and experiment. Index TermsBoost control, voltage gain, voltage stress, Z-source inverter.
Fig. 1. Z-Source inverter.

I. INTRODUCTION

ANY pulse-width modulation (PWM) control methods have been developed and used for the traditional three-phase voltage-source (V-source) inverter. The traditional V-source inverter has six active vectors (or switching states) when the dc voltage is impressed across the load and two zero vectors when the load terminals are shorted through either the lower or upper three devices. These total eight switching states and their combinations have spawn many PWM control schemes. The recently presented Z source inverter [1][3] shown in Fig. 1 has additional zero vectors: shoot-through switching states that are forbidden in the traditional V-source inverter. For the traditional V-source inverter, both switches of any phase leg can never be gated on at the same time or a short circuit (shoot through) would occur and destroy the inverter. The new Z-source inverter advantageously utilizes the shoot through states to boost the dc bus voltage by gating on both upper and lower switches of a phase leg. Therefore the Z-source inverter can boost voltage and produce a desired output voltage that is greater than the available dc bus voltage. In addition, the reliability of the inverter is greatly improved because the shoot through due to mis-gating can no longer destroy the circuit. Thus it provides a low-cost, reliable, and high efciency single stage structure for buck and boost power conversion. In [1], the main circuit of the Z-source inverter and the operation principle have been described in detail. In this paper, we will examine the relationship of voltage boost and modulation index, present two control methods to achieve maximum voltage boost, namely maximum boost control. The voltage boost and voltage stress on the devices will be investigated. The maximum boost control method, and its theoretical relationship of voltage gain versus modulation index will be presented.
Manuscript received May 7, 2004; revised September 20, 2004. Recommended by Associate Editor P. M. Barbosa. F. Z. Peng and M. Shen are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 USA (e-mail: fzpeng@egr.msu.edu). Z. Qian is with the Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPEL.2005.850927

Fig. 2.

Simple boost control waveforms.

II. VOLTAGE BOOST AND STRESS As described in [1], the voltage gain of the Z-source inverter can be expressed as V V (1)

where V is the output peak phase voltage, is the input dc is the modulation index, and is the boost factor, voltage, which is determined by (2) where is the shoot-through time interval over a switching is the shoot-through duty ratio. cycle T, or In [1], a simple boost control method was used to control the shoot-through duty ratio. Fig. 2 illustrates the simple control method that employs a straight line equal to or greater than the peak value of the three phase references to control shoot-through duty ratio in a traditional sinusoidal PWM. The Z-source inverter maintains the six active states unchanged as the traditional carrier based PWM control. For this simple boost control, the obtainable shoot-through duty ratio decreases with the increase of . The maximum shoot-through duty ratio of the , thus reaching zero at simple boost control is limited to

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Fig. 3. Voltage gain of the simple boost control.

a modulation index of one. The thick curve in Fig. 3 shows the versus , which indimaximum obtainable voltage gain, 1. The shaded cates no voltage boost and no voltage gain at area is the possible operation region under the simple control. In order to produce an output voltage that requires a high voltage gain, a small modulation index has to be used. However, small modulation indexes result in greater voltage stress on the devices. Based on (1) and (2), dene the voltage gain as V V (3)

Fig. 4.

Switch voltage stress versus voltage gain.

For any desired voltage gain , the maximum modulation index can be used is (4) As analyzed in [1], the voltage stress V across the switches is BV The voltage stress under this modulation method can be calculated by V BV V (5) Fig. 5 shows the proposed maximum boost control strategy. It is quite similar to the traditional carrier-based PWM control method. The point is: this control method maintains the six active states unchanged and turns all zero states into shoot-through zero states. Thus maximum and are obtained for any given without distorting the output waveform. modulation index As can be seen from Fig. 5, the circuit is in shoot through state when the triangular carrier wave is either greater than the maximum curve of the references V V V or smaller than the minimum of the references. The shoot through duty cycle varies each cycle. To calculate the voltage gain, what we are interested in is the average shoot through duty cycle. . The shoot through state repeats periodically every Assume that the switching frequency is much higher than the modulation frequency, the shoot-through duty ratio over one can be expressed as switching cycle in the interval (6)

Fig. 5. Waveforms of maximum boost control.

The voltage stress across switches versus the voltage gain is plotted in Fig. 4. Using this control method, the voltage stress across the switches is quite high, which will restrict the obtainable voltage gain because of the limitation of device voltage rating. III. MAXIMUM BOOST CONTROL Reducing the voltage stress under a desired voltage gain now becomes important to the control of Z source inverter. As analyzed above, the voltage gain is dened as MB, and the voltage , therefore, to minimize the stress across the switches is voltage stress for any given voltage gain, we have to minimize and maximize , with the restriction of that their product is the desired value. On the other hand, we should maximize for any given modulation index to achieve the maximum voltage gain. Consequently, from (2), we have to make the shoot through duty ratio as large as possible.

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Fig. 6. V

= :

0 5V versus M.

The average duty ratio of shoot-through can be calculated by integrating (6) which yields

Fig. 7.

Voltage stress versus voltage gain.

(7) From (7), the boost factor is obtained (8) With this type of control method, the voltage gain can be determined by the modulation index V (9)
Fig. 8. Sketch map of third harmonic injection control.

versus is shown by the thick The plot of V curve in Fig. 6. The shaded area in the gure is the possible operation region. As can be seen from Fig. 6, the output voltage , the increases when decreases. As approaches output voltage increases to innite. Compared to Fig. 3, the possible operation region of this control method is much wider. On the other hand, for any given voltage gain, a higher modulation index can be used, which means lower voltage stress across the switches. From (9) and voltage gain dened in (3), the maximum modulation index that can be used for a given voltage gain is (10) Thus, the voltage stress is (11) The voltage stress versus the voltage gain is shown in Fig. 7. Compared with the simple control method, shown in Fig. 4, the voltage stress in the proposed control method is much lower, which means that for given devices, the inverter can be operated to obtain a higher voltage gain.

Third harmonic injection is commonly used in a three-phase inverter system to increase the modulation index range. This can so as to increase also be used here to increase the range of system voltage gain range. The sketch map is shown in Fig. 8. The operation principle is identical to the previous case, the only difference is that the modulation waveform is changed. In this can be control, the maximum modulation index third harmonic injection [4]. achieved at Similar to the previous case, the shoot through duty cycle repeats every . We can also get the voltage gain through under this control studying the behavior during method. The shoot-through duty ratio in this period is described in (12) shown at the bottom of the next page. From the above calculation, the average shoot-through duty ratio is (13) shown at the bottom of the next page. Therefore, we have (14) V (15)

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Fig. 11.

System conguration in simulation and experiment.

Fig. 9. V

= :

0 5V versus M .

Fig. 12.

Simulation results with M =0.88 and input voltage 170 V dc.

Fig. 10. Voltage stress of switches versus voltage gain of proposed control methods.

given voltage gain except that the range of voltage gain is extended in the third harmonic injection method. The relationship of voltage stress versus voltage gain is shown in Fig. 10. IV. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The voltage gain is identical to the maximum control method for the same modulation index. The curve of voltage gain versus modulation index is shown in Fig. 9, from which we can see that the possible operation region is extended with the increase of modulation index. From (9) and (15), the two control methods have identical voltage gainmodulation index relationship. Therefore they should share the same voltage stress for any

To demonstrate the validity of the control strategies, simulation and experiments were conducted with the conguration shown in Fig. 11 with the following parameters: Z-source network: 1 mH, 1.3 mF, switching frequency: 10 kHz. The purpose of the system is to compare the performance of the Z-source inverter under different input voltage and similar output three-phase voltage of around

(12)

(13)

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Fig. 13.

Simulation results with

M =1 and input voltage 220 V dc.

Fig. 15. Experimental result at

M =0.88 and input voltage 170 V dc.

Fig. 14. Simulation results with input voltage 250 V dc.

M =1.1 with third harmonic injection and

Fig. 16. Experimental result at

TABLE I THEORETICAL VOLTAGE STRESS AND OUTPUT VOLTAGE UNDER DIFFERENT CONDITIONS

M =1 and input voltage 220 V dc.

205-V rms. The simulation results when the input voltages are 170 V, 220 V, and 250 V are shown in Figs. 1214, respectively. The corresponding modulation index are 0.88 1, and 1.1 with third harmonic injection respectively. In the simulation results, V is the input voltage, V is the dc bus voltage, which is also the voltage stress V , and V is the output line to line voltage after the lter. Based on the analysis above, the theoretical voltage stress and output line to line rms voltage are listed in Table I.

The simulation results in Figs. 1214 are quite consistent with the theoretical analysis, which veries the above analysis and the control concept. Experiments with the same operation conditions and system conguration as in the simulation were conducted. The results are shown in Figs. 1517, where V is the input voltage, V is the voltage stress, is the current through the inductor in the is the output voltage after the lter. Z-source network, and V The gures show that the output voltage is kept nearly constant regardless of the wide varying range of the input voltage and the output voltage agrees with the analysis and simulation results very well. A lower input voltage requires a greater boost factor B, and smaller modulation index. Because the output voltage is nearly constant, the lower modulation index yields higher

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Fig. 17. Experimental result at input voltage 250 V dc.

M =1.1 with third harmonic injection and

voltage stress, V . This can also be observed from the experimental results. Based on these results, the validity of the control methods has been proven. V. CONCLUSION This paper presented two control methods to obtain maximum voltage gain of the Z-source inverter. The method maximizes the shoot through period without effecting the active states by turning all zero states into the shoot through zero state, thus maximum output voltage can be obtained for a given modulation index. In turn, maximum modulation index can be used to obtain any desired output voltage, thus, minimizing the voltage stress across the switches. Third harmonic injection can also be used to extend the modulation index range. The relationship of the voltage gain versus modulation index was analyzed, and the relationship between minimum voltage stress of the switches and voltage gain was given. Simulation and experiments were conducted to verify the control methods and analysis. REFERENCES
[1] F. Z. Peng, Z-source inverter, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 504510, Mar./Apr. 2003. [2] , Z-source inverter, in Proc. IEEE Industry Applications Conf., Pittsburgh, PA, 2002, pp. 775781. [3] F. Z. Peng, X. Yuan, X. Fang, and Z. Qian, Z-source inverter for adjustable speed drives, IEEE Power Electron. Lett., vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 3335, Jun. 2003. [4] D. A. Grant and J. A. Houldsworth, PWM AC motor drive employing ultrasonic carrier, in Proc. IEE PE-VSD Conf., London, UK, 1984, pp. 234240.

Fang Zheng Peng (M92SM96F05) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, in 1983 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Nagaoka University of Technology, Nagaoka Niigata, Japan, in 1987 and 1990, respectively. He was with Toyo Electric Manufacturing Company, Ltd., from 1990 to 1992, as a Research Scientist, was engaged in research and development of active power lters, exible ac transmission systems (FACTS) applications and motor drives. From 1992 to 1994, he was with the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, as a Research Assistant Professor (where he initiated a multilevel inverter program for FACTS applications and a speed-sensorless vector control project). From 1994 to 2000, he worked for Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), as a Research Assistant Professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, from 1994 to 1997, and was a Staff Member, Lead (principal) Scientist, Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Research Center, ORNL, from 1997 to 2000. Since 2000, he has been with Michigan State University, East Lansing, as an Associate Professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He holds over ten patents. Dr. Peng received the 1996 First Prize Paper Award and the 1995 Second Prize Paper Award of Industrial Power Converter Committee in IEEE/IAS Annual Meeting, the 1996 Advanced Technology Award of the Inventors Clubs of America, Inc., the International Hall of Fame, the 1991 First Prize Paper Award in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, the 1990 Best Paper Award in the Transactions of the IEE of Japan (the Promotion Award of Electrical Academy). He was Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS from 1997 to 2001 and has been Chair of the Technical Committee for Rectiers and Inverters, IEEE Power Electronics Society, since 2001.

Miaosen Shen (S04) was born in Zhejiang, China, in 1978. He received the B.S. and M.S. degree from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2000 and 2003, respectively, and is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at Michigan State University, East Lansing. His research interests include power factor correction techniques, electronic ballast, and motor drives.

Zhaoming Qian (SM92) received the M.S. degree in radio engineering from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 1961, and the Ph.D. degree in applied science from the Catholic University of Leuven and the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (IMEC), Leuven, Belgium, in 1989. Since 1961, he has been teaching and conducting research on electronics and power electronics at Zhejiang University, where he became a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering in 1992. He is currently the Deputy Director of the National Engineering Research Center for Applied Power Electronics and the Deputy Director of the Scientic Committee of the National Key Laboratory of Power Electronics, Zhejiang University. His main professional interests include power electronics and industrial applications, EMC in power electronic systems, and system integration in power electronics. He has authored one book on EMC design and more than 250 papers. Dr. Qian received Excellent Education Awards from the China Education Commission and from Zhejiang University in 1993, 1997, and 1999, Science and Technology Progress Awards from the China Education Commission in 1999 and 2003, and Excellent Paper Awards. He has served as a Vice-Chairman of the IEEE PELS Beijing Chapter since 1995.