Adaptive Voltage Tracking Control of Zeta Buck-Boost Converters

Afshin Izadian, Senior Member, IEEE, Pardis Khayyer, Student Member IEEE, Heng Yang, Student Member IEEE

Abstract Compensators and PI controllers have been designed and used for control of Zeta converters. However, frequent voltage variations in some applications such as maximum power point tracking of solar power require a high profile voltage tracking control. In addition, load resistance and inductor current influence the performance of conventional controllers. This paper illustrates the design and application of a model reference adaptive controller for output voltage tracking of a zeta converter. The results, compared with a PI controller, demonstrate a close tracking profile with minimal control effort and elimination of the load resistance dependencies.

I. INTRODUCTION Zeta converters are non-inverting buck-boost circuits with applications in power quality improvement, power factor correction, and interfacing the renewable energy sources to the grid. Therefore, they have a high potential for microgrid and smart grid applications [1,2]. These converters are also used in industrial applications such as: LED lamp drivers, electronic ballast (EB) for fluorescent lamps [2], power rating correction and power quality improvements (PFC) [1], DC/DC converter interfaces between photovoltaic systems and the grid [3], power electronic interface between storage devices (battery and ultra-capacitor) in hybrid electric vehicles [4] and DC converter used for permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSM) to interface for applications such as air conditioning systems, refrigerators, washing machines and medical equipment [5-8]. To achieve non-inverting, low harmonics, and high power factor, multiple resonant elements are used in their structure. These elements make the modeling and control of these converters complicated. Various techniques use peak and average of current and voltage values in a Proportional Integrator (PI), linear compensator, and feedforward in single- or double-loop configurations [9]. These techniques generate high sensitivity to noise, exhibit error in averaged values, and require slope compensation [10]. Average current control techniques [5], [6], [11] are becoming the dominant approach in controlling these converters. The average current control loop is usually used inside a voltage control loop where the error signal from the voltage loop is sent through a PI controller. The PI controller amplifies the current error and in comparison with a saw-tooth carrier waveform it generates PWM pulses [11]. This controller has fixed gains for a voltage and current references, and needs
A. Izadian and H. Yang are with Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, Indianapolis, IN. 46202. E-mail: aizadian@iupui.edu. P. Khayyer is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210. khayyer.1@osu.edu

tuning when circuit parameters or references change. Therefore, it has poor voltage tracking performance and generates overshoot. Feedforward control technique is also used specifically for grid-connected applications of zeta converter [12], [13]. In either single-loop or double- loop configurations, two major controllers are used which are the PI controller [5], [14], [15] and compensator designed based on pole placement techniques [6], [16-17]. While results obtained from pole placement have low error, this technique may not be useful in situations where variable reference voltage or current are the target references and when parameters shift. This may happen in control of renewable energy sources connected to the grid. To overcome this issue and to have a more accurate control for zeta converter, this paper focuses on application of a Model Reference Adaptive Controller to regulate the output voltage of zeta converters. II. CIRCUIT OPERATION AND MODELING Power electronic converters have numerous applications and have important role in overall system efficiency and performance. Accurate control of power converters often guarantees the voltage and frequency stability of the power system. Dynamic modeling of converters is required to design controller for power electronic converters. Many linear or nonlinear modeling techniques are used for mathematical expression of power converters. Nonlinear techniques such as component connection modeling and signal flow graph (SFG) are used for complicated circuits and are generally more accurate. To compare the results of an adaptive controller with PI, the averaged state space model of power converter is used [3], [4], [17], [19-22]. Shown in Figure 1, a non-inverting buck-boost zeta converter has higher number of resonant elements. This imposes a higher order system and higher modes of operation than a conventional converter. The two main operation modes are continuous inductor current mode (CICM) or (CCM), and discontinuous inductor current mode (DCM) or (DCIM).

Figure 1, Schematic of zeta buck-boost converter

Modes of operation are generated when the status of switches change. When the switch (Q) is on, the input

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voltage is applied across L1 and causes a linear increase of current to charge the inductor. The input voltage and the charged capacitor C1 will increase the load current through the inductor L2. When the switch (Q) is off, L1 charges C1 through the diode and L2 supplies the load. The inductor L2 and capacitor C2 in zeta converter create a filter, which lowers the output ripple. In CCM mode, the input and output voltages of the zeta converter are related as follows , (1)

0 0 0

. The averaged model parameters can be obtained as

(6)
0

where D is the converters duty ratio. For values of D less than 0.5 the converter operates in buck mode, and for values of D larger than 0.5 the converter operates in boost mode. The critical equivalent inductance of this circuit [22] is 1 .

where,

(2) (3)

, 0 0 0

0 0 0

, 0.

(7)

More details on component selection and sizing for zeta converter are explained in [18]. III. STATE SPACE AVERAGE MODEL State space averaging is a dynamic modeling technique used for mathematical representation of converters. In this technique, the state space representation of each mode of operation is obtained, and the overall system is represented as an averaged system over a complete cycle of operation. In zeta converters, continuous current mode (CCM) has two modes of operation. Therefore, two sets of equations can be written for this circuit, which can include internal resistances of the capacitors and inductors. Mode 1: switch on and diode off, and Mode 2: switch off and diode on. Each set of state space equations consist of five equations, four of which represent the four state variable dynamics , , , , and one equation to represent the output voltage of the circuit . Equations representing mode 1 are as follows

IV. CLOSED-LOOP CONTROL To maintain the output voltage at the desired value, an adaptive controller is designed. The design of the controller, the output tracking performance, and the control effort are obtained and compared with those of a PI controller. The controller and the converter have been implemented using Matlab/SimPowerSystem toolbox. A. Design of Adaptive Controller This section introduces a model reference adaptive control approach to regulate the output voltage of the zeta converter. Since the main application of these converters is in interfaces of photovoltaic systems, a high profile tracking performance of the output voltage is required. This demands continuous gain adjustments, and elimination of the control system dependencies on load resistance. In addition, frequent load changes in a power system will change the current of the inductor and consequently the output voltage of the system. Adaptive controllers are designed to provide high tracking performance and to eliminate the effect of the load resistance. The control law and gain adaptation techniques [4], [19 20] are represented for the averaged state space model of the zeta converter. The control law is expressed as , (8) where and are the reference model and plant output signals, denotes the reference input and , , are controller gains that are adjusted simultaneously according to a gain adaptation law to mitigate the tracking error. Considering the estimated values of the controller gains, is defined as the equivalent control command , (9) where , , are the estimations of the control gain and are computed according to the gain adaptation technique as , (10) , (11) , (12) where is the adaptation gain and s denotes the sliding surface. The stability proof of this controller is provided in several references including [7], [20].

Mode I: . (4)

Mode II: .

Equations representing mode 2 are as follows

(5)

Considering x=[iL1,iL2,vC1,vC2], the averaged state space model is

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Figure 2 illustrates the control system configuration with respect to zeta converter and the voltage reference. The model generates the reference signal that the controller has to track. The controller compensates for the load variation and unknown parameters such as internal resistance of inductors and capacitors that may shift over time and operating temperature. In this section, the controller is used to compensate for the load resistance that has the highest impact on the output voltage and control performance.

Control Effort for Adaptive Controller 0.9 Control Effort 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1

Duty Cycle

4 6 Time / Second

10

Fig. 4. Control effort of adaptive controller for a 200 load

Fig. 2. Model reference adaptive controller configuration

B. Simulation and Circuit Parameters The circuit element parameters are listed in table 1. The control performance is analyzed in two load resistance values of 20 and 200. We run the power converter at carrier frequency of 1200 Hz. To prevent windup of adaptive controller integrators, the upper and lower limits were applied. These limits along with the adaptation gain and initial condition are listed in Table 2.
TABLE I. CIRCUIT ELEMENTS AND PARAMETERS
Converter Parameters L (H) 0.001 C (F) 0.047 R (Ohm) 200/20

As the load resistance decreased to 20, the higher load current resulted in more ripple in the output voltage. The output voltage profile is illustrated in Figure 5. The model reference adaptive controller achieved a high performance voltage profile with no overshot and minimal voltage ripples. As the adaptation gain increased, we could achieve lower settling time. However, the control effort was increased significantly. The effect of the load variation on the output voltage has also been minimized by using adaptive controllers. However, the controller required more effort to control the voltage when the load power rating increased drastically by 10 times. Figure 6 demonstrates the higher control effort of adaptive controller for a 20 load in the buck and boost regions of operation.
Output for Adaptive Controller 25 Reference Signal Output Voltage 20 Output Voltage / Volt

TABLE II. ADAPTIVE CONTROL PARAMETERS

Pulse Frequency Upper Limitation for Integrator Lower Limitation for Integrator Adaptation Gain Initial Condition for Integrator 1200 Hz 0.6 -0.0001 100 0.1

15

10

The simulation results are obtained for two cases of voltage buck and boost commands. The reference signal along with the controlled output voltage is illustrated in Figure 3. As the figure demonstrates, the output voltage has almost no overshoot, and closely follows the desired reference both in buck and boost regions of operation. The voltage ripple is negligible in these regions of operation for 200 load. The control effort is shown in Figure 4, which demonstrates low control activity to reach the desired output voltage.
Output for Adaptive Controller 25

4 6 Time / Second

10

Fig. 5. Output voltage tracking performance of adaptive controller for a 20 load

Control Effort for Adaptive Controller 0.9 Control Effort 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3

20 Output Voltage / Volt

Duty Cycle

15

0.2 0.1

10

4 6 Time / Second

10

Fig. 6. Control effort of adaptive controller for a 20 Load

5 Reference Signal Output Voltage 0 0 2 4 6 Time / Second 8 10

Fig. 3. Output voltage tracking performance of adaptive controller for a 200 load

A PI controller has also been designed and tuned with proportional gain equal 0.6 and integral gain equal 15. The control system performance is demonstrated in Figure 7. As the figure illustrates, in each region of operation there is

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significant amount of overshoot and undershoot. The settling time was higher than that of the adaptive controller, and could not be controlled. As the proportional gain increased to higher values, the overshoot increased as well. However, the output voltage ripple resulted from the PI controller was negligible. The control effort required to achieve this smooth steady state operation was significantly higher than that of an adaptive controller. The control effort for a 200 load is illustrated in Figure 8. As the load resistance decreased to 20, the tuned PI controller could not control the output voltage, which demonstrated the dependency of the controller on to the load resistance and the inductor current.
Output for PI Controller 25

20 Output Voltage / Volt

15

10

5 Reference Signal Output Voltage 0 0 2 4 6 Time / Second 8 10

Fig. 7. Output voltage tracking performance of a PI controller for a 200 Load

Control Effort for PI Controller 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 Duty Cycle 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0 2 4 6 Time / Second 8 10 Control Effort

Fig 8. Control effort of a PI controller for a 200 load

V. CONCLUSION An adaptive controller was designed for zeta power converters. The main advantage of the controller was to eliminate the output voltage controls from load variation, and provide an independent control approach from the inductor current and parameter variations. Minimal effort compared to a PI controller was required to track the voltage reference. High performance voltage tracking profile was achieved. REFERENCES
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