2nd IEEE International Conference on Power and Energy (PECon 08), December 1-3, 2008, Johor Baharu, Malaysia

Overview of Modulation Techniques for the

Four-Switch Converter Topology
M. Monfared*, Student member, IEEE, H. Rastegar*, H. M. Kojabadi**
*

Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Email: m.monfared@aut.ac.ir, rastegar@aut.ac.ir

** Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran. Email: hmadadi64@yahoo.ca

Abstract Because of a lot of advantages, there are

extensive motivations to utilize four-switch converters in
industrial applications. Many modulation techniques have
been proposed to design a good four-switch converter that is
less sensitive to DC link voltage fluctuations, and have low
AC currents THD and at the same time low distortion in the
uncontrolled phase. Among various techniques, design
procedure and advantages and disadvantages of three most
used methods namely; hysteresis band current control,
sinusoidal PWM, and space vector modulation are
discussed. In order to have clear and effective comparison,
simulation results have been provided and given in this
paper.

C1

va

S1

C1

VC1

S2

C2

VC2

vs

Figure 1. Half-bridge converter (voltage-doubler)

1-4244-2405-4/08/$20.00 2008 IEEE

vb

C
C2

S2

S4

vc

Z
Figure 2. Four-switch voltage source converter

The circuit of Fig. 2 has two converter legs and the

third phase is connected to the middle point of the DC link
capacitor bank. Because of its benefits, this topology has
also found a lot of industrial applications [18].
Main advantages of the four-switch converter compared
to the conventional six-switch converter can be
summarized as bellow [13-40];
The number of the power semiconductor switches
and the fly-wheel diodes are reduced, resulting in
cost and space savings. Besides, the control and drive
circuits are reduced which itself brings more savings.
Due to a reduced number of switches, the conduction
and switching losses in the semiconductor devices
will be reduced.
Eliminating some semiconductor devices from the
topology, directly leads to more reliability.
DC link voltage is as twice as a six-switch converter.
Although it is an advantage in the rectifier operation
mode, but it may not be desired in some inverter
applications.
This topology also has some drawbacks;
The third phase current flows through the DC link
capacitors. So they are exposed to low frequency
harmonics which calls for bigger values for the DC
link capacitors.
A controller is needed to balance the capacitors
voltages. It is proved that the balanced voltages can
be readily achieved by a simple proportional
controller [39].
Since the four-switch converter does not eliminate
the third-order harmonics automatically, so a bigger
value for switching frequency is expected.
During the two last decades, many works regarding the
control and modulation strategies [19-25, 35], design and

DC Link

I.
INTRODUCTION
Semiconductor switches mainly determine the overall
price of the power converter devices. So, there has been
always a desire to develop new topologies with reduced
number of semiconductor devices aiming for reduced
costs. Especially in the range of a few ten kilowatts and
above, this may cause considerable savings. Accordingly,
several AC/DC/AC converter topologies have been
introduced so far [1-12]. Among various topologies, halfbridge converter has shown the best performance thanks
to the reduced number of semiconductor devices,
minimized conduction and switching losses, regeneration
capability, higher DC link voltage utilization, etc. [12-17].
This converter topology, shown in Fig. 1, is often called
voltage-doubler. As it can be seen, the DC link voltage is
twice the conventional full-bridge converter. This
topology is widely employed in industrial applications.
The three-phase extension of this topology is shown in
Fig. 2 and is usually referred to as four-switch converter,
component minimized converter, low cost converter or
component minimized converter.

S3

KeywordsFour-Switch Converter, Modulation Technique,

HB, SPWM, SVM

S1

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2nd IEEE International Conference on Power and Energy (PECon 08), December 1-3, 2008, Johor Baharu, Malaysia

automatically (ic = -(ia+ib)) [19]. Although the HB is

simple and effective, but due to its major disadvantages
such as variable and very high switching frequencies it is
not interesting in industrial applications. Voltagecontrolled modulation strategies need more attention and
are discussed in the following sections.

adaption in AC/DC/AC applications, especially AC motor

drives [26-34] are reported. Some other works
successfully employed this converter in the grid
connection of distributed generation systems such as wind
energy conversion systems [36-38]. Although there are a
lot of reports for four-switch converters, but there is a lack
of a reference that clearly obtains; presents and compares
the different control strategies for these devices. In the
following sections these issues will be addressed
comprehensively.
II.

A. SPWM for the Four-Switch Converter

The idea is similar to the SPWM for the six-switch
converter. The carrier signals and the comparators are the
same and the only modification to the conventional
SPWM in order to control the four-switch converter is the
pattern of the reference signals. For the four-switch
converter, the phase shift between the reference signals
does not obey the three phase symmetry. Assume that for
the converter of Fig. 2 C1 = C2 and the desired phase
voltages are as bellow:

MODULATION STRATEGIES FOR THE FOUR-SWITCH

CONVERTER

The modulation techniques for this converter are

similar to the techniques already employed for the
conventional six-switch converter; however there are
some adoptions in the way that these well-known
techniques are implemented for the four-switch converter.
Table I compares the different modulation strategies for
the voltage source converters [40].

TABLE I.
COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT MODULATION TECHNIQUES FOR THE
VOLTAGE SOURCE CONVERTERS [40]
Modulation
technique
HB
(Hysteresis Band
Current Control)

SPWM
(Sinusoidal/Scalar
PWM)

SVM
(Space Vector
Modulation)

(1)

(2)

(3)

Features

Since, there is no control on the third phase, the middle

point of the DC link (point C) is taken as the reference, so:

Easy operation from zero frequency

Needs close loop current control
DC Link ripple is compensated, permits lower
values for DC link capacitor
Fast transient response
Variable switching frequency
Non-optimum harmonic ripple
Frequency sensitive phase lag of fundamental
current
Very simple to implement
Carrier-based open loop asynchronous or
synchronous carrier
Low undermodulation range (0 < m < 0.7855)
Non-linear characteristics in overmodulation
range
Smooth overmodulation up to square-wave
Lowest harmonic ripple for 0 < m < 0.4
Large fsw based ripple at overmodulation
DC Link voltage ripple introduces additional
output ripple
Simple to implement
Indirectly carrier-based open loop asynchronous
or synchronous carrier
Good for isolated neutral 3-phase output
Large undermodulation range (0 < m < 0.907)
Easy linearization in overmodulation up to
square-wave
Lowest harmonic ripple in undermodulation
range
Large fsw based ripple at overmodulation
DC Link voltage ripple introduces additional
output ripple
Complex computation intensive
Cannot be applied with high carrier frequency

(4)

(5)

(6)

As it can be seen, in order to achieve three-phase

symmetrical voltages, the reference waveform for the
third phase is zero (as assumed) and the reference
waveforms for the first and second phases are sinusoidal
waves with 60 degrees out of phase from each other [18].
Attention should be paid to the coefficient of the
amplitude and the -30 degrees phase shift between the
waveforms of (1) and (4).
B. SVM for the Four-Switch Converter
For the circuit of Fig. 2, the switching status is
represented by the binary variables S1 to S4, which values
of 1 and 0 indicate closed and open switch
respectively. In addition, the switches of each leg are
controlled complementary, i.e.:
 

(7)

 

(8)

Pole voltages which are determined by the switching

status can be obtained as:

The techniques of Table I can also be grouped into

current-controlled modulation and voltage-controlled
modulation strategies. The HB technique belongs to the
first group and the SPWM and SVM techniques belong to
the second one. In the HB method for the four-switch
converter, which is the simplest technique, ia and ib are
generated according to a sine wave pattern with 120
degrees of phase shift while the ic is controlled

804

(9)

(10)

(11)

2nd IEEE International Conference on Power and Energy (PECon 08), December 1-3, 2008, Johor Baharu, Malaysia

And:

(13)

(14)

Fig. 3 depicts that the maximum voltage locus is a

rhombus with corner points defined by the realizable
,
and
). To generate
,
output voltage states (
balanced three-phase sinusoidal waveforms, the output
must be controlled to be circular. The
voltage vector
results in a
maximum circular locus prescribed by
is modulated
maximum rms line voltage of .
at any switching period by vectorially decomposing the
volt-second integral into any of four realizable states:

(15)

(12)

Hence, the phase voltages can be written as:

In which Tsw is the switching period and t1 to t4 are the

to
are applied
time portions of Tsw in which
respectively. Typically, only three of four states are
required to accurately define the magnitude and the phase
during a switching period. This effectively reduces
of
the switching frequency. There are always two
possibilities to select three vectors. It is better to use two
short and one long vectors instead of two long and one
short; Because the long vectors produce larger voltage
drop on inductive loads and larger ripple. In order to
improve the symmetry of the synthesized waveform and
to reduce the switching frequency a reversing scheme
should be used to sequence the vectors. For example, if

sequence is employed in a

sequence

switching period, then
must be employed sequentially. According to the defined
strategy there exist two groups of three vectors; one group
which compose reference
include the long vector
voltages in the sectors I and II and the other group include
and synthesize reference voltages in the
the long vector
sectors III and IV. So to determine PWM timings we can
divide the vectorial space into two groups of adjacent
sectors.

Combinations of switching S1-S4 result in four different

space vectors summarized in Table II. Vectorial
representation of the three phase variables is done by
using the equation 16.

(16)

TABLE II.
POSSIBLE INVERTER STATES AND THEIR CORRESPONDING VOLTAGES
Vector S1S3

VAZ

VBZ

00

E/2

10

E/2

11

E/2

01

E/2

VCZ

(17)

Sectors I and II (

For these sectors the volt-second integral becomes:

As it can be seen in Table II, despite the six-switch

converter, the four-switch converter has no zero vectors.
In fact it is obvious from the circuit of Fig. 2 that there is
no way the three pole voltages can be at the same potential
during the operation. This means that the pulse width
modulation should be developed based on the remaining
active vectors (Fig. 3).

The vectorial decomposition of the above equation

along with the time weights restriction can be written as:

(19)



Im()
(01)

(11)

Solving the system of equations 19 results in the

following modulation times:

III

IV

II
Re ()

(00)

(18)

Figure 3. Switching vectors for the four-switch converter

805

(10)

(20)
(21)
(22)

2nd IEEE International Conference on Power and Energy (PECon 08), December 1-3, 2008, Johor Baharu, Malaysia

Sectors III and IV (

)
1

Va(E/2)

The volt-second integral can be written as equation 23

and the system of equations 24 will be obtained
accordingly.

-1

(23)

1
Vb(E/2)

(24)



Vc (E/2)

(25)

(26)
1

(27)

To achieve even more symmetry and lower switching

frequencies the sequence of the calculated vectors must be
selected as Figs 4 and 5.

0
-1

II(f1)

0
-1

And the modulation times can be calculated as:

-1
0

T
Time

Figure 6. Simulated SPWM technique (fsw = 20 f1)

S1
1
Va(E/ 2)

S3
2Tsw
Figure 4. Switching patterns in sectors I and II.

-1

Vb(E/ 2)

S1

-1

2Tsw
Vc (E/ 2)

S3

Figure 5. Switching patterns in sectors III and IV.

0
-1

III. SIMULATION RESULTS

SPWM and SVM modulation techniques for the fourswitch converter of Fig. 2 have been simulated using
Matlab/Simulink according to the previously obtained
equations. Results are shown in Figs 6 and 7. All system
parameters are the same for both cases.

II(f1)

-1
0

T
Time

IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a comprehensive paper review for costeffective four-switch converters has been conducted. This
work also clearly obtains and compares the control
strategies for these devices.

Figure 7. Simulated SVM technique (fsw = 20 f1)

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial
support of Iranian National Elite Foundation.

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2nd IEEE International Conference on Power and Energy (PECon 08), December 1-3, 2008, Johor Baharu, Malaysia

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