Current‐mode control of DC–DC power converters: a backstepping approach

Current‐mode control is a robust industrial DC–DC power converter control scheme that has been successfully tested, is widely accepted, and is commonly implemented with conventional linear P and PI controllers. The need of more systematic designs with enhanced performance has motivated recent studies with linear and nonlinear advanced techniques, but the rigorous understanding and substantiation of the underlying key robust functioning capability are still lacking. In this paper, a constructive control approach is employed to study the current‐mode control problem of a class of DC–DC power converters, yielding a cascade control design methodology with: a robust convergence criterion coupled with a systematic and transparent construction‐tuning procedure, a rationale to explain the robust controller functioning, and a unified framework to interpret and compare the proposed controller with the existing conventional and advanced control designs. The implementation and functioning of the proposed control design is illustrated experimentally with a boost converter. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Composite hierarchical anti‐disturbance control for nonlinear systems with DOBC and fuzzy control

Anti‐disturbance control and estimation problem is introduced for a class of nonlinear system subject to disturbances. The adaptive disturbance observers are constructed separately from the controller design to estimate the disturbance with partial known information. By integrating disturbance‐observer‐based control with fuzzy control, a novel type of composite hierarchical anti‐disturbance control scheme is presented for a class of nonlinear system with unknown nonlinear dynamics. Simulations for a flight control system are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the results compared with the previous schemes.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Anti‐disturbance control for nonlinear system via adaptive disturbance observer

This paper addresses the problems of disturbance estimation and anti‐disturbance control for nonlinear system with exogenous disturbance, which is generated from an unknown exogenous system. The state observer and the adaptive disturbance observer are designed, simultaneously. Compared with the existing methods, which assumed that the exogenous system parameter matrix was known, our disturbance observer is more applicable in practice. Utilizing the estimation information, an observer‐based dynamic output feedback controller is designed, which avoids the influence of output disturbance on the closed‐loop system, and contains a disturbance compensation term to compensate the input disturbance. Finally, simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stable reactive power balancing strategies of grid‐connected photovoltaic inverter network

In this paper, a distributed reactive power control based on balancing strategies is proposed for a grid‐connected photovoltaic (PV) inverter network. Grid‐connected PV inverters can transfer active power at the maximum power point and generate a certain amount reactive power as well. Because of the limited apparent power transfer capability of a single PV inverter, multiple PV inverters usually work together. The communication modules of PV inverters formulate a PV inverter network that allows reactive power to be cooperatively supplied by all the PV inverters. Hence, reactive power distributions emerge in the grid‐connected PV inverter network. Uniform reactive power distributions and optimal reactive power distributions are considered here. Reactive power balancing strategies are presented for both desired distributions. Invariant sets are defined to denote the desired reactive power distributions. Then, stability analysis is conducted for the invariant sets by using Lyapunov stability theory. In order to validate the proposed reactive power balancing strategies, a case study is performed on a large‐scale grid‐connected PV system considering different conditions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Galerkin‐based sliding mode tracking control of non‐minimum phase DC‐to‐DC power converters

Output voltage control of nonlinear DC‐to‐DC power converters is handicapped by the non‐minimum phase character exhibited by these systems. The problem has been usually solved with indirect control strategies that work through the input current. In this article, we report a robust control methodology that uses Galerkin‐based sliding manifolds, which use full state reference profiles and an estimate of the disturbed load parameter. The sliding surface incorporates a first‐order Galerkin approximation of the input current that provides robustness to piecewise constant load perturbations by dynamic compensation: it allows on‐line accommodation to the action of the load estimator. This results in high‐accuracy tracking of periodic references at the output resistance of boost and buck‐boost converters. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nonlinear control of power converters: a new adaptive backstepping approach

This paper proposes a new backstepping approach to nonlinear control of power converters which is attracting considerable attention in both theoretical research and practical applications. The main difference between the proposed algorithm and the existing classical adaptive backstepping method in the literature is that the adaptation mechanism does not follow the certainty‐equivalence principle. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Adaptive disturbance observer‐based control for stochastic systems with multiple heterogeneous disturbances

Antidisturbance control problem is discussed for stochastic systems with multiple heterogeneous disturbances, which include the white noise and the disturbance with unknown frequencies and amplitudes. An adaptive disturbance observer is designed to estimate the disturbance with unknown frequencies and amplitudes, based on which, an adaptive disturbance observer‐based control scheme is proposed by combining adaptive technique and linear matrix inequality method. It is proved that the closed‐loop system is asymptotically bounded in mean square when multiple heterogeneous disturbances exist simultaneously and that the equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable in probability as additive disturbance disappears. Finally, two simulation examples, including a wind turbine system, are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

Asymptotic rejection of sinusoidal disturbances based voltage balance control in back‐to‐back power converters

This paper addresses the imbalance problem of the dc‐link capacitor voltages in the three‐level diode‐clamped back‐to‐back power converter. In order to cope with it, a mathematical analysis of the capacitor voltage difference dynamics, based on a continuous model of the converter, is first carried out. It leads to an approximated model that contains explicitly several sinusoidal functions of time. In view of this result, the voltage imbalance phenomenon can be addressed as an output regulation problem, considering the sinusoidal functions of time as exogenous disturbances. Thus, a novel approach to deal with the mentioned problem in the back‐to‐back converter is presented. Then, the particular features of the disturbances are used to design several controllers. They all follow an asymptotic disturbance rejection approach. In this way, the estimates of the disturbances are used to apply a control law that cancels them while regulating the capacitor voltage balance as well. Finally, the performance of the proposed control laws is evaluated, presenting the simulation results obtained when the different controllers are implemented. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sliding mode control of DC‐to‐DC power converters using integral reconstructors

A sliding mode feedback controller, based on integral reconstructors is developed for the regulation of the ‘boost’ DC‐to‐DC power converter circuit conduction in continuous conduction mode. The feedback control scheme uses only output capacitor voltage measurements, as well as knowledge of the available input signal, represented by the switch positions. The robustness of the feedback scheme is tested with abusively large, unmodelled, sudden load resistance variations. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Composite disturbance‐observer‐based control and H∞ control for complex continuous models

A novel type of control scheme combining the disturbance‐observer‐based control (DOBC) with H_∞ control is proposed for a class of complex continuous models with disturbances. The disturbances are supposed to include two parts. One part in the input channel is generated by an exogenous system with uncertainty, which can represent the harmonic signals with modeling perturbations. The other part is supposed to have the bounded H₂‐norm. Parametric uncertainties exist both in concerned plant and in exogenous subsystem. The disturbance observers based on regional pole placement and D‐stability theory are designed and integrated with conventional H_∞ control laws. The new composite DOBC and H_∞ control scheme is applied to complex continuous models for the case with known and unknown nonlinearity, respectively. Then the first type of disturbances can be estimated and rejected, and the second type can be attenuated; simultaneously, the desired dynamic performances can be guaranteed. Simulations for a flight control system are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the results and compare the proposed results with the previous schemes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sliding mode control of boost and buck‐boost power converters using the dynamic sliding manifold

Non‐minimum phase tracking control is studied for boost and buck‐boost power converters. A sliding mode control algorithm is developed to track directly a causal voltage tracking profile given by an exogenous system. The approximate causal output non‐minimum phase asymptotic tracking in non‐linear boost and buck‐boost power converters is addressed via sliding mode control using a dynamic sliding manifold (DSM). Use of DSM allows the stabilization of the internal dynamics when the output tracking error tends asymptotically to zero in the sliding mode. The sliding mode controller with DSM links features of conventional sliding mode control (insensitivity to matched non‐linearities and disturbances) and a conventional dynamic compensator (accommodation to unmatched disturbances). Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the sliding mode controller even for a known time‐varying load. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient and fair scheduling for two‐level information broadcasting systems

In a ubiquitous environment, there are many applications where a server disseminates information of common interest to pervasive clients and devices. For an example, an advertisement server sends information from a broadcast server to display devices. We propose an efficient information scheduling scheme for information broadcast systems to reduce average waiting time for information access while maintaining fairness between information items. Our scheme allocates information items adaptively according to relative popularity for each local server. Simulation results show that our scheme can reduce the waiting time up to 30% compared with the round robin scheme while maintaining cost‐effective fairness. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A unified observer for robust sensorless control of DC–DC converters

Due to the large variety of converters' configurations, many different sensorless controllers are available in the literature, each one suited for a particular converter. The need for different configurations, especially on the same power supply, make it clear the advantage of having a shared control algorithm. This paper presents a unified nonlinear robust current observer for buck, boost and buck–boost converters in synchronous and asynchronous configurations. The unified observer speeds up the design, tuning and the implementation, and requires a memory cheaper code, easier to certify. Simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the approach in different scenarios.     

Stability of current-mode control for DC–DC power converters

DC–DC power converters are switched devices whose averaged dynamics are described by a bilinear second-order system with saturated input. In some cases (e.g., boost and buck–boost converters), the input output dynamics can be of nonminimum-phase nature. Current-mode control is the standard strategy for output voltage regulation in high dynamic performance industrial DC–DC power converters. It is basically composed by a saturated linear state feedback (inductor current and output voltage) plus an output voltage integral feedback to remove steady-state offset. Despite its widespread usage, there is a lack of rigorous results to back up its stabilization capability and to systematize its design. In this paper, we prove that current-mode control yields semiglobal stability with asymptotic regulation of the output voltage.     

Output feedback control of a three‐phase four‐wire unified power quality conditioner

The increasing penetration of power electronics in electrical equipment entails a significant impact on the deterioration of power supply quality. In this paper, the problem of power quality is addressed for distorted three‐phase four‐wire power grids supplying non‐linear unbalanced loads. A unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) is considered to ensure satisfactory electrical energy quality. To this end, a UPQC controller is designed to meet four control objectives: i) compensation of the harmonics and the reactive load currents; ii) compensation for the harmonic voltages at the point of common coupling (PCC); iii) cancelation of the neutral current; iv) and regulation of the inverter DC voltage. The control design relies on the UPQC nonlinear model that accounts for the electrical grid line impedance. Unlike previous works, the proposed controller features an output‐feedback nature as it combines a nonlinear regulator, designed with a sliding‐mode technique, and a state observer designed using a Lyapunov stability based technique. The latter provides the former with online estimates of the series filter AC voltages, which are not assumed to be accessible to measurements. The closed loop error system is analyzed using the average stability approach. It turns out that all (tracking and estimation) errors are asymptotically vanishing, except for the DC bus voltage tracking error, which is periodic in steady‐state with an amplitude depending on the (DC bus) capacitor, the larger the capacitor the smaller the steady‐state DC voltage tracking error level. This theoretical result is confirmed by simulations involving wide range variations of the load current.     

Composite stratified anti‐disturbance control for a class of MIMO discrete‐time systems with nonlinearity

Anti‐disturbance control and estimation problem are investigated for nonlinear system subject to multi‐source disturbances. The disturbances classified model is proposed based on the error and noise analysis of priori knowledge. The disturbance observers are constructed separately from the controller design to estimate the disturbance with partial known information. By integrating disturbance‐observer‐based control with discrete‐time sliding‐mode control (DSMC), a novel type of composite stratified anti‐disturbance control scheme is presented for a class of multiple‐input–multiple‐output discrete‐time systems with known and unknown nonlinear dynamics, respectively. Simulations for a flight control system are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the results compared with the previous schemes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive fault tolerant control for a class of uncertain fractional‐order systems based on disturbance observer

In this paper, a class of fractional‐order nonlinear systems are considered in the presence of actuator faults. A novel fault tolerant control scheme based on disturbance observer has been presented, where the actuator faults are considered as the system disturbance and can be approximated by the proposed disturbance observer. The developed fault tolerant control guarantees the convergence of the closed‐loop system and the output tracking performance. Finally, a simulation example is presented to verify the effectiveness of the new method.     

Passivity‐based control for large‐signal stability of high‐order switching converters

This article presents a new passivity‐based control law that stabilizes the output voltage of a high‐order DC‐DC converter. Such nonlinear control law assures robust large‐signal stability, provides zero steady‐state error despite uncertainty in converter parameters and has enough degree of freedom to satisfy the usual transient specifications of DC‐DC converters. This new integral control is derived in three steps. First, a static law is obtained. Second, a positive semidefinite storage function is synthesized to guarantee zero steady‐state error of the output voltage. Finally, the storage functions of the first two steps are combined to derive the new control law for high‐order DC‐DC converters. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

核动力装置蒸汽发生器水位的分层模糊自适应控制

针对压水堆核动力装置蒸汽发生器的水位控制提出一种分层模糊自适应控制方案，该方案中2个模糊控制器分层连接，每个模糊控制均采用典型模糊控制单元，使得模糊规则个数和可调参数个数大大减少，便于在线学习和实时控制，给出了分层模糊控制器的解析表达式及可调参数的在线学习方法，在快速加负荷和突然甩负荷的仿真实验中，该方案的控制效果明显优于已有的变参数PID控制，验证了该方案的有效性。     

Design of UDE‐based controllers from their two‐degree‐of‐freedom nature

The control algorithm based on the uncertainty and disturbance estimator (UDE) is a robust control strategy and has received wide attention in recent years. In this paper, the two‐degree‐of‐freedom nature of UDE‐based controllers is revealed. The set‐point tracking response is determined by the reference model, whereas the disturbance response and robustness are determined by the error feedback gain and the filter introduced to estimate the uncertainty and disturbances. It is also revealed that the error dynamics of the system is determined by two filters, of which one is determined by the error feedback gain and the other is determined by the filter introduced to estimate the uncertainty and disturbances. The design of these two filters are decoupled in the frequency domain. Moreover, after introducing the UDE‐based control, the Laplace transform can be applied to some time‐varying systems for analysis and design because all the time‐varying parts are lumped into a signal. It has been shown that, in addition to the known advantages over the time‐delay control, the UDE‐based control also brings better performance than the time‐delay control under the same conditions. Design examples and simulation results are given to demonstrate the findings. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.