IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 61, NO.
5, MAY 2014
An Adaptive Prefiltering Method to Improve the
Speed/Accuracy Tradeoff of Voltage Sequence
Detection Methods Under Adverse Grid Conditions
José Matas, Miguel Castilla, Jaume Miret, Member, IEEE, Luis García de Vicuña, and Ramon Guzman
Abstract—This paper deals with the improvement of the tran-
sient response and harmonic, subharmonic, and dc-offset voltage
rejection capability of a grid voltage sequence detection scheme
based on a second-order generalized integrator (SOGI). To per-
form that, the SOGI structure is first analyzed in deep, empha-
sizing both its tradeoff limits between settling time and harmonic
attenuation and the sensitivity to grid subharmonics and dc-offset
voltage. Then, a study of the effect of grid voltage harmonics and
subharmonics in SOGI and in the SOGI-FLL and MSOGI-FLL
structures is introduced. Hence, to overcome these problems, a
new structure based on the use of the SOGI filter as prefilter
for the previous structures is proposed to achieve a faster time
response and higher harmonic rejection. This structure is used in
a sequence detection scheme for the detection of the grid voltage
components in the αβ-frame and it is applied in a three-phase
PV system. Experimental and comparative results are shown to
validate this proposal.
Index Terms—Distributed generation, generalized integrators,
grid offset voltage rejection, grid voltage sequence detection,
power quality, subharmonic rejection, voltage sags.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE electrical networks are becoming more distributed
due to the necessity of more clean, reliable, and flexible
ways to produce and deliver energy. The increasing penetra-
tion of nonlinear loads is creating a growing concern for the
quality of the ac supply system. Nonlinear loads such as cy-
cloconverters, arc furnaces, integral cycle controlled furnaces,
pulse-burst-modulation power conditioners, rectifiers supplying
cyclic loads, motors driving cyclic loads, and adjustable speed
drives can produce interharmonic or subharmonic voltage fluc-
tuations [1]–[4]. Subharmonics can also be produced by wind
generators that deliver low frequency power due to wind speed
variations, the wind gradient, and the tower shadow effect [5].
The frequency of these subharmonics can be very low and
Manuscript received October 18, 2012; revised February 7, 2013 and
April 12, 2013; accepted May 26, 2013. Date of publication July 23, 2013; date
of current version October 18, 2013. This work was supported by the Ministerio
de Economía y Competitividad of Spain under Project ENE2012-37667-
C02-02.
J. Matas, M. Castilla, J. Miret, and L. García de Vicuña are with the De-
partment of Electronic Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia (UPC),
08800 Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain (e-mail: jose.matas@upc.edu).
R. Guzman is with the Department of Signal Theory and Communications,
Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), 08800 Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2013.2274414
0278-0046 © 2013 IEEE
2139
produce visual flicker in the range between 0.5 Hz and 30 Hz
[6]. The grid voltage can also contain dc-offset due to saturation
in current transformers or to grid faults [7]. In this scenario, the
power converters connected to the grid should provide stable
operation even during faults and network disturbances. One
of the most severe conditions that a power inverter must face
is the operation during voltage sags [8]–[10]. Most sags are
unbalanced and produce ripple and harmonics in the delivered
power, deteriorating the power quality of the system [11]–[13].
Different control schemes can be found in literature to over-
come these problems in which the current controller and the
employed synchronization technique play an important role
[14]–[21]. In these controllers a fast and accurate detection
of the positive and negative sequence components of the grid
voltage is a crucial issue during unbalanced voltage sags.
Several methods for synchronization and grid-voltage monitor-
ing under polluted and variable-frequency environments have
been presented [22]–[34]. Usually phase-locked loop (PLL)
in a synchronous reference frame is used to detect the phase
angle, amplitude, and frequency of the grid voltage [24]–[42].
However, its performance is deteriorated when the utility grid
is unbalanced. To overcome this obstacle, an enhanced PLL
(EPLL) [24], [25], a quadrature PLL (QPLL) [26], and a PLL
based on a generalized integrator (GI) [38]–[40] and named as
“second-order generalized integrator” SOGI-PLL [41], [42] had
been reported. The EPLL consists of a frequency-adaptive filter
whose frequency follows the fundamental frequency of the grid.
The QPLL is designed by using the estimation of the in-phase
and quadrature-phase amplitudes and the frequency of the fun-
damental input signal. Finally, the SOGI-PLL has a GI as main
block that generates in-phase and quadrature-phase sinusoidal
components of the input signal. A comparative study of these
structures was reported in [43] and [44] for single-phase and
three-phase systems. In [45] a structure simplification of the
SOGI-PLL that replaces the PLL by a frequency-adaptive loop
SOGI-FLL was introduced. The FLL estimates the frequency
of the input signal and was used to tune the SOGI, or GI, with
the grid voltage frequency. In [46] a multiple SOGI (MSOGI-
FLL) is proposed that uses a cross-feedback network consisting
of multiple SOGIs to reject the harmonics from the grid. The
MSOGI-FLL is designed to achieve a fast response, but its
response can be distorted by interhamonics in the input signal.
This paper first analyzes in detail the relationship between
damping factor, harmonic attenuation, and settling time of the
SOGI structure, which restricts the SOGI performance when
2140 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2014
Fig. 1. Block diagram of a grid connected PV system.
applied to the detection of the sequence components of the
grid voltage. This analysis reveals the high sensitivity of the
SOGI quadrature-phase output to input subharmonics and dc-
offset voltage, because the transfer function of this output
behaves like a low-pass filter. The subharmonic sensitivity
produces an important deterioration of the SOGI performance
and noticeable errors in its output signals. In the case of dc-
offset its effect is dangerous because produces the failure of
the SOGI system and the malfunction of the sequence detection
system. This analysis is extended to the FLL, SOGI-FLL, and
MSOGI-FLL structures to evaluate the scope of the problem.
To solve these problems, this paper proposes a simple new
structure based on the use of the SOGI filter as prefilter for the
previous structures. This structure can reject grid subharmonics
and grid dc-offset voltage and it has a faster settling time and
better filtering capability. Hereafter, as an application example,
this solution is proposed in a double SOGI-FLL (DSOGI-FLL)
in the αβ-frame for the grid voltage sequence detection in a
three-phase photovoltaic (PV) system. Experimental results of
this structure are presented and compared with the sequence
detection scheme proposed in [45].
This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the
power system. Section III analyzes in detail the SOGI structure
and reveals its limitations and problems with subharmonics and
dc-offset. Section IV proposes an analysis of the harmonic and
subharmonic influence on the FLL, SOGI-FLL, and MSOGI-
FLL structures. Section V proposes the use of a SOGI prefilter
as a solution. Section VI proposes the application of this
structure as a voltage sequence detection block of the grid
voltage components on a three-phase PV system. This section
also presents the experimental and comparative results of this
structure in a PV system. Section VII is the conclusion of
this work.
II. S YSTEM D ESCRIPTION
This paper deals with an enhanced grid voltage sequence
detection method, which reveals its superior performance dur-
ing adverse grid conditions. A PV application is chosen to
introduce the proposed sequence detection method in a practical
environment.
A. PV Three-Phase Inverter System
Fig. 1 depicts the configuration of a PV system, which is
composed by a PV source, a dc-link capacitor, a three-phase
three-wire inverter, and an LCL filter.
In this system, the power flow is balanced through the control
of the dc-link voltage, vdc . The inverter is connected to the
point of common coupling (PCC) by a LCL filter to reduce the
amount of high frequency harmonics injected to the grid.
The grid voltage can be affected by the fault produced some-
where in the distribution network.
B. Voltage Sag
A voltage sag is an abnormal short-time reduction in one or
more phases of the grid voltages produced mainly by short-
circuits between phase and ground, between phase to phase
(to ground), and the start-up of large motors [8]. The most
widely accepted classification of voltage sags is presented in
[10]. Voltage sags in a three-wire system can be characterized
in the stationary reference frame (SRF) as
vα = vα+ + vα− (1)
vβ = vβ+ + vβ− (2)
where vα+ and vβ+ are the positive sequence voltages in the
SRF and vα− and vβ− are the negative ones. These positive and
negative voltage sequences can be represented as
vα+ = V + cos(wt + ϕ+ ) (3)
vβ+ =V +
sin(wt + ϕ ) +
(4)
vα− = V − cos(−wt − ϕ− ) (5)
vβ− −
= V sin(−wt − ϕ ) −
(6)
where V + and V − are the amplitudes of the positive and
negative sequences respectively, ϕ+ and ϕ− are their respective
initial phase angles, and w is the grid frequency. The grid fault
can be characterized by the voltage unbalance factor (V U F )
[51], which describes the amount of unbalance in the system as
the ratio between negative and positive voltage amplitudes
   2
(vα− )2 + vβ−
−
V
V UF = =  2 . (7)
V+  2
vα+ + vβ+
C. Three-Phase Inverter Control Under Grid Faults
The behavior of an inverter during a fault is determined
by the injected currents at the PCC. A fast reference current
generator is required to react properly to the fault. Fig. 2 depicts
the block diagram of the grid fault controller. The controller
inputs are the measured phase voltages v at the PCC, the current
i flowing through the Li inductors, and the dc-link voltage. Volt-
age v and current i are transformed into SRF values. Voltages vα
and vβ are then decomposed into symmetric components using
a sequence detection block. The dc-link voltage regulator is in
charge of setting the active power reference P ∗ that keeps the
power balance. The symmetric components of the grid voltage
and P ∗ are conveyed to the reference generator to build the
reference currents i∗α and i∗β . This generator determines the
MATAS et al.: PREFILTERING METHOD TO IMPROVE SPEED/ACCURACY OF VOLTAGE SEQUENCE DETECTION 2141

Fig. 3. SOGI block diagram.

Fig. 2. Control diagram of the grid fault controller.

control strategy to operate with the fault [16], [17]. The next
block corresponds to the current control and space vector pulse
width modulator (SVM) to commute the inverter switches, u1
to u6 .
Reactive power injection is not considered in this application
in agreement with the international standards for interconnect-
ing low rated power PV systems with the utility grid [49].
The positive sequence voltages are obtained from the grid
voltage by
 +  π  
vα 1 1 −e−j 2 vα
= . (8)
2 e−j 2
π
vβ+ 1 vβ

There are several control strategies for setting the current

references to operate the three-phase inverter during voltage
sags [16], [17]. For this study, a control strategy that consists of
following the positive sequence of the grid voltage is adopted Fig. 4. Magnitude plots of Hd(s) and Hq(s) for ξ = 0.707.
[17]. This strategy generates sinusoidal and balanced currents
during the fault. The expressions of the current references when A. SOGI Tradeoff Relationship Between Bandwidth and
using this strategy are Settling Time

2 P ∗ vα+ Fig. 3 depicts the block diagram of a SOGI structure. The

i∗α = 2   2 (9)
3
SOGI is a frequency-adjustable resonator that is damped by an
vα+ + vβ+ outer loop [38], [39]. This external loop introduces the error e
between resonator output and the input signal in the resonator
2 P ∗ vβ+ input through a gain 2ξ. The parameter ξ is the damping factor
i∗β =  2 . (10)
3 
+ 2 of the system.
vα + vβ+
The SOGI outputs are vd and vq , which are, respectively, in-
phase and quadrature-phase with the input signal vin . From the
The dynamics of the controller shown in Fig. 2 are mainly de-
input-to-output point of view, the SOGI behaves as a bandpass
termined by the sequence detection block. In fact, the transient
filter (BPF) for vd , and as a low-pass filter (LPF) for vq , with
response of this block must be fast enough to ensure the absence
the following closed-loop transfer functions
of overshoots in the injected current that may cause converter
damage. In this paper, the SOGI algorithm [39] is chosen as a vd (s) 2ξwo · s
Hd (s) = = 2 (11)
basic sequence detector block for comparison purposes. In the vin (s) s + 2ξwo · s + wo2
next section, the limitations of the SOGI algorithm are analyzed
in detail. vq (s) 2ξwo2
Hq (s) = = 2 (12)
vin (s) s + 2ξwo · s + wo2

III. P ROBLEM I DENTIFICATION : SOGI L IMITS AND where wo is the SOGI input frequency. The Bode magnitude
S UBHARMONIC AND DC-O FFSET P ROBLEMS plots of (11) and (12) are depicted in Fig. 4 for ξ = 0.707.
According to (11) and (12), the main parameters related
As described above, there are several detection methods with the SOGI time response and filter selectivity are the
reported in literature to extract voltage sag information at run- settling time
time. These methods share a practical limitation to be able
to achieve a fast time response to voltage sags. This issue is 4
ts ≈ (13)
discussed here in detail using the SOGI structure. ξwo
2142 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2014

Fig. 6. Structure of the SOGI-FLL.

Fig. 5. Time response of the SOGI vd and vq outputs for an input signal (vin
of 50 Hz/220 Vrms and 1 Hz/10% of vin subharmonic, and wo = win ).

and the SOGI bandpass filter gain at a given harmonic h of the

fundamental frequency wo

2ξ · h
|Hd (jhwo )| = (14)
(1 − h2 )2 + (2ξ · h)2

where 0 < ξ < 1 and h is an odd integer number. Taking into

account the typical h values 3, 5, 7, and so on, then (14) can be
further simplified to

2ξ
|Hd (jhwo )| ≈ . (15)
h

From (13)–(15) it can be seen that the SOGI has a tradeoff

relationship between harmonic attenuation and settling time,
i.e., for small values of ξ(ξ  1) it has a strong harmonic
attenuation, but at an expense of a very long settling time.

B. DC-Offset and Subharmonic Impact on SOGI

Quadrature-Phase Output Signal Fig. 7. Structure of the MSOGI-FLL.

The presence of subharmonics and dc-offset in the input B. MSOGI-FLL

signal have a direct impact on the SOGI quadrature-phase
output, since this output behaves has a LPF with gain 2ξ;
see Fig. 4. To evaluate this problem, Fig. 5 shows the SOGI
response to a subharmonic of 1 Hz and a 10% of vin amplitude.
As seen in Fig. 5, this subharmonic is directly translated to
the output vq and can produce problems and distortion in all
the SOGI-based structures such as the SOGI-FLL and MSOGI-
FLL. Moreover, when vin contains dc-offset it causes the failure
of these structures, so they cannot be used in this situation.
IV. H ARMONICS AND S UBHARMONIC E FFECTS
ON FLL, SOGI-FLL AND MSOGI-FLL
A. SOGI-FLL
Fig. 6 shows the scheme of the SOGI-FLL [45]. The FLL
block is used to tune the SOGI filters with the grid frequency.
Fig. 7 shows a Multi-SOGI-FLL scheme [46]. This structure
is able to extract fundamental and multiple harmonic compo-
nents using multiple SOGI filters connected in parallel. The
extracted signals are cross-feedback canceled from the inputs
of the multiple SOGIs to obtain fundamental and harmonic
components without harmonic distortion. The MSOGI-FLL
can be used to obtain the amplitude, frequency, fundamental
and harmonic components, and positive and negative sequence
components of the grid voltage. However, this structure has a
high sensitivity to unknown, or spurious, interhamonics and
subharmonics in the input signal. Moreover, the accuracy in
the obtained components can be affected when the input signal
harmonics are in a narrow range [46]. For instance, an extracted
second-harmonic component (100 Hz) can be partially influ-
enced by the fundamental component (50 Hz) of vin , because
both frequency components are very close each other. To avoid
MATAS et al.: PREFILTERING METHOD TO IMPROVE SPEED/ACCURACY OF VOLTAGE SEQUENCE DETECTION 2143

these collateral interferences, the damping factor should be low

to set a very narrow bandwidth, which would make the system’s
response too slow [46].

C. Ideal Phase-Detector Operation

As can be seen in Fig. 6, the kernel of the FLL is a phase
detector (PD), which consists of the product of the error, e =
vin − vd , with vq . The PD can be analyzed as in a conven-
tional PLL. Assuming that vin , vd and vq are pure sinusoidal
signals, that is vin = A sin(wt + θ), vd = A sin(ŵt + θ̂) and
vq = −A cos(ŵt + θ̂), where we = w − ŵ and θe = θ − θ̂ are
the frequency and phase errors between the input and the
estimated signals, respectively. Then, the PD output can be
written as


e · vq = − A sin(wt + θ) − sin(wt  + θ̂) A cos(ŵt + θ̂)
 
A2 (we t + θe )
=− sin(we t + θe ) + 2 · sin
2 2 Fig. 8. Steady-state response of the FLL to a 50 Hz input signal for the SOGI-
 FLL and MSOGI-FLL: (a) with a third-harmonic and 15% of vin ; (b) with a
1 Hz subharmonic and 10% of vin . (ξ = 0.707 and γ = 0.4 rad/V2 ).
· sin(2ŵt + φ) (16)

distortion in the PD produces ripple in the estimated frequency,

which, assuming that the FLL is locked in steady state (ŵ ≈
w), can be simplified to

 
A2 θe
e · vq = − sin(θe ) + 2 · sin · sin(2wt + φ) (17)
2 2
where φ = tg −1 (sin(θe )/(cos(θe ) − 1)). This last expression
shows that the PD generates a small dc signal and a second
harmonic term of the input frequency.
D. Harmonics and Subharmonics in Phase-Detector
Now, considering that the input signal contains odd
harmonics
vin = A sin(wt + θ) + f (3w, 5w, 7w, . . .)
the PD output when the system is locked in steady state can be
written as
A2
e · vq = − [sin(θe ) + fm (3we , 5we , 7we , . . .)
2 SOGI blocks (inside of the MSOGI-FLL), which are feedback
+ fn (2w, 6w, 8w, . . .)] .
From (19), it can be seen that the PD generates even harmon-
ics of w and odd multiples of we . These harmonics distort the
PD output, but their impact is attenuated by the SOGI BPF and
LPF behavior for frequencies that are among wo . Therefore, the
SOGI should be very selective if a strong rejection to harmonics
is required, which in turns implies a longer settling time. A
detailed expression of the PD output for an input signal with
a third-harmonic is shown in the Appendix. In the case of
subharmonics a similar expression to (19) can be obtained.
However, as shown in Fig. 4, the subharmonics go directly
to the PD due to the flat response of the LPF vq output for
frequencies below wo . Then, the harmonic and subharmonic
which causes additional distortion in the SOGI outputs.
E. Harmonics and Subharmonics Effects on the SOGI-FLL
and MSOGI-FLL
The SOGI-FLL and MSOGI-FLL have been simulated to
determine the impact of harmonics and subharmonics on the
FLL outputs. The simulations are for an input signal with
a 15% of a third-harmonic and also for 10% of a 1 Hz
subharmonic. The filter parameters are ξ = 0.707 and γ =
0.4 rad/v2 . The MSOGI-FLL is designed to reject fifth, sev-
enth, and 11th-harmonics. However, the third-harmonic is also
considered, in this case, as it was an unknown interharmonic
to test the MSOGI-FLL and SOGI-FLL behavior to spurious
(18)
interhamonics.
Fig. 8(a) shows the results for the case of a third-harmonic.
Note in this figure that the ripple distortion in MSOGI-FLL
is higher than in SOGI-FLL. This phenomenon is due to the
ripple in the FLL output that distorts the outputs of all the
(19) again to the cross-feedback network. Notice that the maximum
ripple in the FLL output is of 1.62 Hz for the SOGI-FLL and of
1.73 Hz for the MSOGI-FLL.
Fig. 8(b) shows the FLL response for the case of 1 Hz
subharmonic. In this figure, it can be seen that the steady-
state response of the SOGI-FLL and MSOGI-FLL are almost
identical and that the ripple is very important. Note that the
maximum ripple is of 3.88 Hz and the distorted waveform has
a 50 Hz carrier frequency modulated by a 2 Hz subharmonic.
To assess the impact of the FLL ripple at the SOGI outputs
we propose the method shown in Fig. 9. This method consists
of subtracting the outputs of a SOGI that works at constant
frequency from the outputs of the SOGI-FLL distorted by
its own FLL ripple. This method has been also applied to
2144
Fig. 9. Block diagram used to measure the voltage distortion caused in the
orthogonal outputs of the SOGI-FLL by ripple in the FLL output.
Fig. 10. Steady-state amplitude distortions in the outputs of the SOGI-FLL
and MSOGI-FLL due to ripple in the FLL output frequency for an input signal
with of a 3rd-harmonic and 15% of vin .
the MSOGI-FLL using a second MSOGI block operating at
constant frequency. The measured results are shown in Figs. 10
and 11.
Fig. 10 shows the measured voltage distortions in vd and
vq for the case of a third-harmonic. It can be seen that the
distortion in vd reaches 7.6 V for the SOGI-FLL and 7.4 V for
the MSOGI-FLL. For vq the distortion reaches 11.6 V for the
SOGI-FLL and 10.2 V for the MSOGI-FLL.
Fig. 11 shows the distortion induced for the case of 1 Hz
subharmonic. Notice that the SOGI-FLL and MSOGI-FLL
distortions are identical. The maximum distortion in vd is of
30 V and in vq is of 40 V. As it can be seen these distortions are
very important and deteriorate the response of these systems.
All these distortions are summarized in Table I.
V. P ROPOSED S OLUTION : U SE OF SOGI P REFILTER
The aim of this section is to present the use of a SOGI filter
as a system prefilter, which can overcome the limitations of a
single SOGI and is not influenced by grid dc-offset voltage or
by subharmonics.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2014
Fig. 11. Steady-state amplitude distortions in the outputs of the SOGI-FLL
and MSOGI-FLL due to ripple in the FLL output frequency for an input signal
with a 10% of 1 Hz subharmonic.
A. Use of SOGI Filter as Prefilter as Solution for
Subharmonics and Harmonics
In Fig. 12 appears the proposed solution to overcome sub-
harmonic and dc-offset voltage problems in the vq output. The
idea consists of the series connection of two SOGI structures.
The first one is used as a bandpass prefilter. The second one is
a SOGI-FLL that allows obtaining the estimated frequency of
the input signal. The first SOGI is adaptively tuned using the
frequency provided by the second SOGI-FLL. This structure
will be referred as SOGI-FLL with prefilter (SOGI-FLL-WPF)
from now on.
The SOGI-FLL-WPF alleviates the negative effect of grid
subharmonics and improves the system response in relation to
grid harmonics. It is worth remarking that the main characteris-
tics of this structure are as follows.
1) The estimated frequency ripple is much lower than a
SOGI-FLL or MSOGI-FLL, allowing a fine-tuning of
SOGI filters.
2) The quadrature-phase signal is much less affected by input
subharmonics than a simple SOGI-FLL, or MSOGI-FLL.
A considerable improvement in the quadrature-phase out-
put signal is obtained.
3) It enhances the harmonic rejection of the system and
reduces the amplitude distortion in the in-phase and
quadrature-phase output signals.
4) It can be used as a prefilter connected in series to the
MSOGI-FLL to obtain a better behavior in front of input
subharmonics or harmonics.
To analyze the benefits of the SOGI-FLL-WPF structure in
comparison with the SOGI-FLL and MSOGI-FLL, the same
previous simulations of Section IV have been performed for
1 Hz subharmonic in the input signal. For this case, it is im-
portant to highlight that the obtained frequency ripple is of only
0.11 Hz, which is much lower than the previous ones. Besides,
the maximum amplitude distortion in vd and vq has been greatly
reduced to less than 1 V.
MATAS et al.: PREFILTERING METHOD TO IMPROVE SPEED/ACCURACY OF VOLTAGE SEQUENCE DETECTION
TABLE I
S UMMARY OF H ARMONIC AND S UBHARMONIC D ISTORTIONS P RODUCED IN D IFFERENT SOGI-BASED S TRUCTURES
n
Fig. 12. Proposed SOGI-FLL structure with SOGI prefilter.
Fig. 13. Cascade connection of several SOGIs.
In the case of harmonics, the maximum frequency ripple
obtained in Fig. 8(a) has been reduced from 1.62 Hz to 0.77 Hz
for the SOGI-FLL and from 1.73 Hz to 0.87 Hz for the MSOGI-
FLL. The distortion in the vd and vq outputs of these structures
have also been reduced, see Table I.
It is important to emphasize that the use of a prefilter consti-
tutes in fact a connection in cascade of two SOGI filters, which
produces an increase in the filter-order of the system. Then, the
series connection of multiple SOGI is analyzed and proposed
in next subsection as a way to overcome the mentioned tradeoff
relationship of a single SOGI filter, enhancing the features of
the system.
B. Analysis of Harmonic Attenuation and Settling Time
The study of the cascade connection of two SOGI filters can
be extended to n-SOGI filters as shown in Fig. 13.
The n-order system of Fig. 13 achieves higher harmonic
attenuation and a similar settling time than a single SOGI for
equal damping factors (ξ1 = ξ2 = . . . = ξn ). In this case, the
damping factors should be equal to avoid the predominance of
any SOGI with respect to the others. The transfer function of
this system is
n Notice that these settling times represent an important time
vdn (s) 2ξwo · s
Hdn (s) = = . (20)
vin (s) s2 + 2ξwo · s + wo2
The gain and the settling time of this system at a given
harmonic h of the fundamental frequency wo , considering that
2145
all win are fixed to wo , can be approximated by
∼ 2ξ
|Hdn (jhwo )| = (21)
h
4 4 2
ts ≈ = · (22)
ξwo hwo |Hdn (jhwo )|1/n
where |Hdn (jhwo )| is the gain of the n-order SOGI system at
the harmonic h. Note that (21) implies that the attenuation at a
given harmonic has been increased by an “n” factor, (i.e., n ·
20 log(2ξ/h) dB).
C. Design of n-Order SOGI System
The SOGI has a tradeoff between settling time and atten-
uation. In this point, an n-order SOGI system is designed to
overcome this limitation. The main objective in this design is to
achieve a faster time response of an n-order SOGI than a single
SOGI with the same harmonic attenuation.
The unique option to reduce the settling time of an n-order
SOGI is to increase the damping factors of the system at
expenses of achieve less harmonic attenuation, see (22). These
damping factors can be increased until obtaining the same
harmonic attenuation as a single SOGI. In this situation, the
settling time of the n-order SOGI is faster than the single SOGI.
From this point of view, the design of the n-order SOGI has
been changed in favor of achieving a faster transient response
that a single SOGI, but with similar harmonic attenuation.
As a design example, Fig. 14 depicts the Bode magnitude
plot of a first-, second-, and third-order cascaded SOGIs for
a small damping factor of 0.11, where the attenuations at the
fifth-hamonic are −26.8 dB, −53.6 dB, and −80.4 dB, respec-
tively. We have chosen the desired attenuation of −26.8 dB for
a fifth-harmonic as a starting point in the design of the filter.
This damping factor would lead to the same settling time for all
these filters of 0.115 s.
As it can be seen in Fig. 14, the gains of the first- and
third-orders SOGIs can be increased 26.8 dB and 53.6 dB,
respectively, to achieve the same attenuation of −26.8 dB as
the single SOGI. Now, the damping factors of the second-
and third-order SOGI should be 0.53 and 0.89, respectively,
which supposes that the settling times of these filters have been
reduced from 0.115 s to 0.024 s and 0.014 s, respectively.
reduction for the second- and third-orders SOGIs systems.
The following expression is derived using (21):
h
ξ≈ · |Hdn (jhwo )|1/n (23)
2
2146
Fig. 14. Bode magnitude plot of a first-, second-, and third-order SOGI for
ξ = 0.11.
Fig. 15. (a) Settling time versus gain at h = 5 for first-, second-, and third-
order SOGI system. (b) Time response reduction of second- and third-order
SOGI with respect to the single one.
and allows us to derive the relationship between the settling
time and the harmonic attenuation for h = 5 which is depicted
in Fig. 15. It is worth to see in this figure that ts increases
as the gain for h = 5 decreases. Observe that the longest ts
always correspond to the first-order SOGI. Fig 15(b) depicts a
comparison between the settling times of the second and third-
order SOGIs with respect the first-order SOGI to highlight the
improvement achieved by the cascaded SOGIs. The comparison
is made in terms of percentage of achieved time reduction.
Observe that these time reductions are always above a 50%. In
the case of −50 dB the time reduction arrives to 88% for n = 2
and to 94% for n = 3.
According to Fig. 15(b), it is clear that the best relation
between time response reduction and system order is always
achieved by the second-order SOGI, n = 2. Note that the
increase in performance of the system for n = 3 with respect
to n = 2 is small, about a 10% more. Therefore, it can be stated
that n = 3 is the maximum number of cascaded SOGI that it is
worth to use to obtain a better ts for the same filter attenuation.
The proposed prefilter structure shown in Fig. 12 can have a
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2014
maximum of two SOGI prefilters in its input stage to obtain a
faster transient response in relation to a single SOGI-FLL.
The step-by-step design procedure for this system consists
of defining first the attenuation for a specific harmonic. This
attenuation determines the filtering capability of the system
and its robustness to harmonic distortion in the event of fast
transient disturbances (for instance, voltage sags). Second,
the corresponding damping factors and settling times can be
obtained using (21) and (22) for a single SOGI, n = 1, and
for higher orders, n = 2 and n = 3. And third, the order of
the system should be chosen according to the desired time
reduction.
In view of the above results, it can be stated that the cascaded
SOGIs can achieve a faster transient response to voltage sags
than a single SOGI when their damping factors are designed
to achieve the same harmonic attenuation. This response over-
comes the design tradeoff of a single SOGI, which means that
this proposal can lead to a faster response of three-phase PV
systems if it is used for the grid voltage positive sequence
extraction as proposed in next section.
Finally, Table II summarizes the main features of the SOGI-
FLL, MSOGI-FLL, and the proposed one with prefilter. This
table also considers the sequence detection algorithms exposed
in next section. These algorithms are compared in terms of com-
putational load, subharmonics sensitivity, interharmonic sen-
sitivity, dc-offset voltage rejection, required knowledge of the
grid harmonic content, and tradeoff between settling time and
harmonic attenuation. The computational load has been eval-
uated for a floating-point TMS320F28335 DSP at 150 MHz.
In the case of MSOGI-FLL the computational load depends on
the number of grid harmonics to be considered. As a typical
situation, the grid voltage harmonics to cancel in this case are
3, 5, 7, 9, and 11.
VI. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
Experimental results were obtained for a PV system that
delivers active power to the grid. These results validate the
proposed DSOGI-FLL-WPF structure in a practical grid with
voltage distortion and faults.
A. Experimental Setup
The experimental setup of the grid-connected PV system
considered in this work is shown in Fig. 1. It includes a dc-
source configured to emulate the PV array (Amrel SPS-800-
12-D013), a 4.5 kVA Semikron three-phase inverter and an
ac programmable three-phase voltage source (Pacific AMX-
360 12 kVA) to emulate the grid and get repetitive unbalanced
faults. The setup uses a digital control platform based on the
floating-point TMS320F28335 DSP. The setup parameters are
shown in Table III.
B. Proposed Sequence Detection Block in αβ-Frame
The use of the proposed SOGI prefilter to detect the sequence
of the grid voltage to obtain in-phase and quadrature-phase
components of the αβ-frame is shown in Fig. 16.
MATAS et al.: PREFILTERING METHOD TO IMPROVE SPEED/ACCURACY OF VOLTAGE SEQUENCE DETECTION
TABLE II
C OMPARISON OF D IFFERENT SOGI-BASED S TRUCTURES
TABLE III
PARAMETERS OF S YSTEM S ETUP
Fig. 16. Proposed sequence detection block based on a DSOGI-FLL with
prefilter structure in the αβ-frame.
In this scheme, the FLL is used only in the α-frame to make
the sequence detection adaptive to the grid frequency. For the
β-frame a second-order SOGI is used with the grid frequency
provided by the FLL of the upper α-frame. The positive
sequences, vα+ and vβ+ , are obtained by simple addition and
subtraction of the in-phase and quadrature-phase components
of the grid αβ-voltages. This structure can be named “Double
SOGI-FLL with prefilter” (DSOGI-FLL-WPF) from now on.
The same structure can be used with a MSOGI scheme if the
SOGI-2 blocks of Fig. 16 are replaced by the MSOGI block
of Fig. 7.
The experimental results of this sequence detection scheme
were experimentally compared with those obtained using the
DSOGI-FLL [45].
C. Experimental and Comparative Results
The programmed voltage sag is of type C (single-phase-to-
ground fault) with V U F = 0.3. The pre-fault grid voltages are
Va = 1∠0◦ (pu), Vb = 1∠ − 120◦ (pu), and Vc = 1∠120◦ (pu).
The grid voltages during the fault are Va = 0.8∠0◦ (pu), Vb =
0.6∠ − 137◦ (pu), and Vc = 0.6∠137◦ (pu), see Fig. 17. The
grid voltage has a high harmonic content (fifth and seventh
harmonics) that lead to a measured voltage THD in the pre-fault
of 7.8% and 11.68% for the α and β frames, respectively. These
2147
Fig. 17. Measured grid voltages under a type C fault and strong harmonic
distortion. (Top) 100 V/div, 100 ms/div. (Bottom) 100 V/div, 10 ms/div.
TABLE IV
S YSTEM C ONTROL AND S EQUENCE D ETECTION PARAMETERS
distortions turn to 7.8% and 21.7% during the fault. The gains
of the sequence detection methods of the proposed DSOGI-
FLL-WPF and the DSOGI-FLL were designed to have an
attenuation at the fifth-harmonic of −28 dB to avoid distortion
and ensure a high-quality waveform in the generated reference
currents. The parameters of these sequence detection methods
are shown in Table IV.
Fig. 18(a) and (b) shows the grid injected currents when
using the DSOGI-FLL and the proposed DSOGI-FLL-WPF,
respectively. Note that the proposed scheme with prefilter
presents a faster response than the DSOGI-FLL. This point
can be clearly observed during the current transition intervals
shown in this figure. See also in Fig. 18(c) and (d) that the
injected currents are sinusoidal and balanced despite the dis-
torted and unbalanced grid voltage, achieving a current THD of
only 2% during the fault. Fig. 19(a) and (c) shows the measured
positive sequence voltages in the αβ-frames, vαβ +
. Fig. 19(b)
and (d) shows the generated reference currents, i∗αβ .
In Fig. 18 it can be seen that the settling times of the DSOGI-
FLL-WPF and of DSOGI-FLL are of 0.039 s and 0.11 s,
2148 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2014

Fig. 18. Measured grid currents using (plots a and c) the DSOGI-FLL and (plots b and d) the proposed DSOGI-FLL-WPF sequence detection blocks. Plots (a)
and (b) 2.5 A/div, 100 ms/div. Plots (c) and (d) are a detail of currents inside boxes in (a) and (b) (2.5 A/div, 10 ms/div).

Fig. 19. Experimental results of DSOGI-FLL (plots a and b) and of DSOGI-FLL-WPF (plots c and d). Plots (a) and (c) are the αβ positive sequence voltages
and its magnitude. Plots (b) and (d) are the generated current reference and its magnitude.

respectively, which implies a time reduction in the time re-
sponse of a 64%. This time reduction agrees with the theoretical
prediction of Section V. This fact points out again the better
performance of the proposed solution.
Finally, the grid frequency was subjected to a step perturba-
tion from 50 Hz to 45 Hz to compare the behavior of the FLL in
both methods. The estimated frequency is shown in Fig. 20(a).
In this figure, the response of the DSOGI-FLL and the DSOGI-
FLL-WPF appears with and without overshoot, respectively.
This response is due to the lower damping factor of the DSOGI-
FLL with respect to the DSOGI-FLL-WPF, which leads to
a slower time response in the sequence detector and thus to
an overshoot in the estimated frequency. Moreover, Fig. 20(b)
depicts a detail of the estimation at steady state. Note that
the ripple produced by harmonics in the DSOGI-FLL-WPF is
lower than in DSOGI-FLL. For the DSOGI-FLL the error in the
estimated frequency arrives to 0.9 rad/s, while for the DSOGI-
FLL-WPF is reduced to 0.2 rad/seg.
VII. C ONCLUSION
This paper presents an analysis of the SOGI structure show-
ing the problems with grid dc-offset voltage and subharmonics
and emphasizing the design tradeoff between damping factor,
settling time, and harmonic attenuation. The use of a SOGI
prefilter in the SOGI-FLL structure is proposed to overcome
these problems and to achieve a faster settling time.
In addition, this structure is used in the detection of the
sequence components of the grid voltage to react faster to volt-
age sags, provide clean current references, reject grid dc-offset
voltage, reject grid subharmonics, and have less sensitivity to
grid harmonics. This configuration has been finally applied with
MATAS et al.: PREFILTERING METHOD TO IMPROVE SPEED/ACCURACY OF VOLTAGE SEQUENCE DETECTION 2149

Fig. 20. (a) Estimated frequency obtained by the FLL of the DSOGI-FLL and DSOGI-FLL-WPF for a frequency step perturbation from 50 Hz to 45 Hz.
(b) Detail of harmonics at steady state.

the DSOGI-FLL-WPF structure for the grid sequence detection A3
in a three-phase PV system. Experimental and comparative X1 = (cos(we t)−1)+ (cos(3we t)−B) (34)
(A+A3 L)
results of this DSOGI-FLL-WPF during voltage faults have 
been presented. The reported results validate the proposals A3
X2 = sin(we t) + sin(3we t) (35)
presented in this paper as a solution to improve the PV system (A + A3 L)

response to voltage sags and its rejection to grid subharmonics 1
and dc-offset voltage. Y1 = (cos(we t) − 1) + (cos(3we t) − B) (36)
L

1
Y2 = sin(we t) + sin(3we t) (37)
A PPENDIX L
Considering an input signal with a third-harmonic vin = Z1 = cos(we t) − B (38)
A sin(wt) + A3 sin(3wt) and vq = −A cos(wt),
 the PD output
Z2 = sin(3we t) (39)
can be formulated as
B = |Hd (j3w)| (40)
A2
e · vq = − [sin(we t) + fm (3we ) + fn (2w, 4w, 6w)] (24) L = |Hq (j3w)| . (41)
2

where
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José Matas received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. de-
grees in telecommunications engineering from the
Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain,
in 1988, 1996, and 2003, respectively.
Since 1990, he has been an Associate Professor in
the Department of Electronic Engineering, Technical
University of Catalonia, Barcelona, where he teaches
courses of digital signal processors and power elec-
tronics. His research interests are in the areas of
power electronics, nonlinear control, and renewable
energy systems.
MATAS et al.: PREFILTERING METHOD TO IMPROVE SPEED/ACCURACY OF VOLTAGE SEQUENCE DETECTION
Miguel Castilla received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.
degrees in telecommunication engineering from the
Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain,
in 1988, 1995, and 1998, respectively.
Since 2002, he has been an Associate Professor in
the Department of Electronic Engineering, Technical
University of Catalonia, where he teaches courses on
analog circuits and power electronics. His research
interests are in the areas of power electronics, non-
linear control, and renewable energy systems.
Jaume Miret (M’98) received the B.S. degree in
telecommunications, the M.S. degree in electronics,
and the Ph.D. degree in electronics from the Tech-
nical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in
1992, 1999, and 2005, respectively.
Since 1993, he has been an Assistant Professor in
the Department of Electronic Engineering, Technical
University of Catalonia, where he teaches courses
on digital design and circuit theory. His research
interests include dc-to-ac converters, active power
filters, and digital control.
2151
Luis García de Vicuña received the M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in telecommunications engineering from
the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona,
Spain, in 1980 and 1990, respectively, and the Dr.Sci.
degree from the Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse,
France, in 1992.
From 1980 to 1982, he was an Engineer with
control applications company. Currently, he is a Pro-
fessor in the Department of Electronic Engineering,
Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, where
he teaches power electronics. His research interests
include power electronics modeling, simulation and control, active power
filtering, and high-power-factor ac/dc conversion.
Ramon Guzman received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
in telecomunications engineering from the Univer-
sitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain in
1999 and 2004, respectively. He is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree in the Power and Control
Electronics Systems (SEPIC) group.
Since 2001, he is an Associate Professor of the
Comunications and Signal Theory Department at
the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona,
Spain. His current research interests are in the area of
nonlinear and adaptive control for three phase power
converters.