International Journal of Innovative Engineering Research (E-ISSN: 2349-882X)

Vol 7, Issue 7, July 2017

A Review on Power Line Communication Strategy for DC-MG

Using Switching Frequency Modulation of Power Converters
Shruti Gupta Dr. Malaya Saurava Das
M.Tech Scholar Professor
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
TIT, Bhopal TIT, Bhopal
shruti233522@gmail.com malaya_rec@rediffmail.com

Abstract— — Communication between power converters is loads in a so called “islanded mode.” Several states in the USA
vital for high performance DC micro-grids controls. However, invested millions to promote high penetration of microgrids as
for residential DC micro-grid applications, using external
communication link would increase the system cost, and reduce a part of their climate resiliency plans against natural disasters,
the system flexibility and reliability. With this technology, cost- especially after hurricane Sandy. Since microgrids typically
effective low bandwidth communication links between power include renewable sources and batteries, DC microgrids [1]
converters can be established within a DC micro-grid. To
will have the capability to increase the overall system
improve the reliability of DC microgrids operation, power line
communication (PLC) strategy may be used with switching efficiency.
frequency modulation (SFM) of a power converter. The PLC
strategy uses the voltage ripple on the DC bus voltage, which is The microgrid consists of different DG, ESSs and loads,
inherently generated by converter’s switching activities as an and the aim is to integrate an ac/dc converter so that the
information signal. By using the SFM, all microgrid components microgrid can operate both in islanded mode or grid connected.
sharing the DC bus as communication channel can obtain power As it can be seen on the figure, different types of energy
flow information with FFT analysis of DC bus line frequency.
generation systems are included in the microgrid [2]. On the
Keywords— DC microgrid; Power line communication one hand, various solar panel arrays and a mini wind-power
(PLC); DC bus control signal; Switching frequency modulation
(SFM); Dual active bridge (DAB) converter; system are installed on the roof, connected to the microgrid
through dc-dc and an ac-dc converter, respectively. On the
NOMENCLATURE other hand, two programmable dc sources have been included
with the aim of programming different generation profiles and
PLC Power line communication
emulating the behavior of other DG units. Regarding the loads
SFM Switching frequency modulation
connected to the system, in this case different programmable
DC MG DC microgrid loads are employed. This enables the emulation of different
DG Distributed generator load profiles to test diverse operation conditions in the
EMS Energy management strategy microgrid. In order to compensate energy generation and
ESS Energy storage systems demand differences, different ESS units are used on the
PLS Power line signaling microgrid.
DBS DC bus signaling Micro-grids are small scale power systems that use
DBCS DC bus control signaling distributed renewable and/or non-renewable generations and
ZVS Zero voltage switching energy storage systems to supply power to local loads. Most of
DAB Dual active bridge renewable sources and energy storage devices, such as
Photovoltaics (PV), fuel cells and batteries, generate DC
IBDC Isolated bidirectional DC-DC converter
power, and more and more electrical loads in residential houses
PSM Phase shift modulation or commercial buildings use DC power, such as laptops, LED
FFT Fast Fourier Transform lighting, etc. In a DC micro-grid, these sources and loads are
I. INTRODUCTION connected directly via a common DC bus [3].
Microgrids are local energy networks that involve Fig. 1 shows the structure of a typical DC micro-grid.
renewable energy sources and storage systems. They have the Compared with the AC systems, DC micro-grids have the
capability to be locally controlled. Therefore, they can advantage of higher efficiency by eliminating the wasteful AC
disconnect from the grid when there is a blackout, or a fault at to DC and DC to AC conversion stages [1]. DC micro-grids
the main grid, and continue to supply a portion of their local hold extraordinary promise for a wide variety of situations [2],

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 International Journal of Innovative Engineering Research (E-ISSN: 2349-882X)
Vol 7, Issue 7, July 2017
but there are still a few barriers to deploy this technology, such
as the initial cost of the system, lack of standards and code of
practice, etc.
Figure 1: A typical DC Microgrid
To improve the system performance, the DC micro-grids
must be controlled in an optimal way based on system control
law. Many control methods have been proposed, and they are
classified into three categories [3]:
Independent control: each power converter in the DC
micro-grid operates independently. The system is low cost and
reliable, but the system performance cannot be optimized
because each power converter does not know the operation of
other power converters in the system.
Centralized control [4]: all the power converters in the DC
micro-grid are controlled by a central controller through
external communication links. Various control methods, such
as active load sharing control, can be easily applied to the DC
micro-grid, and the system performance can be optimized.
However, the reliability of the system is degraded due to the
whole system depends on the central controller and external
communication links.
Distributed control [3][5][6]: the DC micro-grid control is
distributed to each power converter controller. The system can
still function under the conditions of single or multiple power
converters failure, so it has better reliability than the system
under centralized control. For some distributed control
methods, low bandwidth external communication link for each
power converters are still needed for correct operation [5].
To remove the external communication link, DC bus
signalling (DBS) based distributed control methods were
proposed by several researchers [3]-[6]. In these methods, the
DC bus acts as a communication link between the power
converters. During the operation, different DC bus voltage
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levels indicate different system operation modes. All the power
converters respond to the level of the DC bus voltage, and they
also can change the level of the DC bus voltage to control other
converters in the system [3]. However, with DBS based control
schemes, only very limited information can be exchanged
between the power converters, therefore, the system
performance optimization is still limited and it is more suitable
for simple structured DC micro-grids. The idea of using DC
bus as a communication link in the DBS methods is similar to
the power line communication (PLC) technology, which is able
to use the power line for communication. PLC technology has
been widely investigated, and it has been proved as a reliable
method for communication in many applications. However,
conventional PLC requires independent circuits for injecting,
amplifying and processing the communication signal, which
increases the system costs and volume, and is not suitable for
residential DC micro-grids applications, where the system cost
is the key.
As mentioned, the reliability of the communication
between DC MG elements for EMS can be improved when the
output voltage ripple frequency is used to provide information
about load sharing. This is because, compared with obtaining
information from the changing voltage level of DBS, obtaining
information from the switching frequency does not cause
degradation through the transmission line impedance. In the
conventional DAB converter, the output voltage is controlled
by the PSM. Therefore, when the switching frequency
instantaneously changes, the output voltage is not seriously
affected. As shown in Fig 3, the output voltage ripple on the
IBDC intrinsically carries the switching frequency. Using FFT
analysis on the DC bus line voltage, the switching frequency of
IBDC can be detected and used as information about the load
conditions for EMS to other converters [8].
Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) is the most popular
strategy employed in the power converter controls, and it is
also a technique used to encode a message into a pulsing
signal. There are two modulation methods to carry information
by PWM signals: the frequency-shift keying (FSK) method
which modulates the PWM carrier frequency, and the
phaseshift keying (PSK) method which modulates the phase of
the PWM signals. This paper focuses on PWM/FSK
modulation.
II. POWER LINE COMMUNICATION
Power Line Communications (PLC) is the use of existing
electrical cables to transport data, and it has been around for a
very long time. Power utilities have been using this
technology for many years to send or receive data on the
power grid using the existing infrastructure. For instance, the
electrical power utility in London used PLC to remotely
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 International Journal of Innovative Engineering Research (E-ISSN: 2349-882X)
Vol 7, Issue 7, July 2017
control some of its equipment on the grid (such as high
voltage switches) in the 1920s. This technique is still
employed by several utilities that use analog or digital devices
to transfer 9.6 Kbits/s over many miles of electrical cable.
"Power Line Communications" basically means any
technology that enables data transfer at narrow or broad band
speeds through power lines by using advanced modulation
technology. Our system will mostly be implemented in areas
such as institutions, offices, etc. Power line communications
can be used in office or home to host of devices and eliminates
the need for additional cables [9].
The Power Line communication (PLC), which is also
called the broadband over power lines or power line
telecommunications, is a wireline technology that is able to
use the power wires also for transmission. PLC has been
widely investigated in the past [1]–[8], and the most common
solution is based on dedicated amplifiers for injecting the
signal and signal processing for decoding the information.
Applications of PLC technology include digital metering,
home automation, indoor Internet access, etc. [10]. Due to the
recent development of integrated digital controllers for
switched-mode power supplies (SMPSs) [11], more and more
intelligence may be included in the IC controller if the
complexity is low enough to satisfy the cost constraints
existing in SMPS applications. Indeed, among several
potential advantages of integrated digital controllers for
SMPS, system diagnostics, auto tuning, and communications
[12]–[14] are the most interesting features that digital
controllers are able to offer compared to their analog
counterpart.
A power converter switching frequency modulation
method for communication purposes has been proposed [12].
By changing the PWM carrier frequency and detecting the
switching signal on the DC bus, power converters are able to
communicate to each other via a common DC bus. The
communication signal is inherently generated by the PWM of
DC/DC converters, so no additional circuit is needed for
injecting the communication signal on the DC bus. However,
there are several limitations to this method. The switching
noise was used to detect the switching frequency on the DC
bus, therefore, the signal processing is complicated, and extra
analog peak detector circuits and high order digital filters are
needed. In addition, the number of the DC/DC converters can
be connected to the DC bus and the communication speed are
limited. The proposed method has a high bit error rate at bit
rate of 2 kbps.
III. DESIGN OF DC BUS CONTROL SIGNAL
For the interaction between the conventional AC grid and the
DC MG, an IBDC is required to regulate the DC bus. The
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DAB converter can be used as an IBDC. The DAB converter
regulates the output voltage using a PSM. In [14] SFM-DBCS
scheme proposed with the switching frequency of the DAB
converter is controlled for power management and is
independent of DC bus voltage regulation.
A. Switching Frequency Modulation
As mentioned, the reliability of the communication between
DC MG elements for EMS can be improved when the output
voltage ripple frequency is used to provide information about
load sharing. This is because; compared with obtaining
information from the changing voltage level of DBS, obtaining
information from the switching frequency does not cause
degradation through the transmission line impedance. In the
conventional DAB converter, the output voltage is controlled
by the PSM. Therefore, when the switching frequency
instantaneously changes, the output voltage is not seriously
affected. The output voltage ripple on the IBDC intrinsically
carries the switching frequency. Using FFT analysis on the DC
bus line voltage, the switching frequency of IBDC can be
detected and used as information about the load conditions for
EMS to other converters.
B. Frequency Variation strategy
In order to use the proposed SFM-DBCS for current sharing,
the switching frequency should be changed according to load
current variations. Therefore, a proper frequency variation
strategy must take into account the characteristics of the DAB
converter for the DC bus regulator, as well as the SFM-DBCS.
One of the disadvantages of the DAB converter is the ZVS
limitation at light load conditions [11]. Due to the influence of
output capacitance of primary MOSFET (Coss), energy stored
in the coupling inductance (LS) should be higher than energy
stored in Coss to achieve soft switching.
C. Output Voltage Ripple
The output voltage ripple of the DAB converter in steady
state conditions can be derived based on the current flowing
through the output filter capacitor.
D. Frequency Allocation for Communication between DC
MG components
Due to the presence of multiple converters sharing the same
DC bus communication channel, the communication collision
can occur, as with any transmission protocol. To avoid the
communication confliction, the DC bus voltage can only be
controlled by one converter in the proposed SFM-DBCS. In
addition, the frequency allocations among multiple converters
are required.
Fig. 2 shows the efficiency comparison between the
conventional PSM with a fixed frequency at 50 kHz and the
proposed SFM-DBCS according to the load variations [14].
Due to higher switching frequency in the non-ZVS region with
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 International Journal of Innovative Engineering Research (E-ISSN: 2349-882X)
Vol 7, Issue 7, July 2017
less than 350-W load conditions, the efficiency of the proposed
method is lower than that of the conventional method, caused
by high switching losses. However, from 350 W to 600 W load
conditions, the proposed method shows higher efficiency
because it can extend the ZVS capability at light load
conditions. Even though the higher switching frequency is
applied to the overall load conditions, the difference of the
efficiency is negligible because the higher switching turn-off
losses increase while conduction losses decrease.
Figure 2: Comparison of power conversion efficiency between the PSM
with 50kHz and the proposed PLC in the DAB converter [14]
IV. DC MICRO-GRIDS APPLICATIONS
For a DC micro-grid, data only need to be transferred
locally, therefore, only data link layer need to be designed,
which is the protocol layer that transfer data between power
converters. A DC micro-grid is a multiple access network that
incorporates a shared medium (common DC bus), therefore, it
is necessary to exploit a Multiple Access Control (MAC)
protocol for this application. Some common MAC
communication methods, such as master/slave polling
arrangement and carrier sense multiple access with collision
avoidance (CSMA/CA), etc. are currently under evaluation.
The application layer defines the data that should be sent
and received for each type of power converters. A system level
optimized control scheme will be proposed based on a list of
criteria, such as overall system efficiency, system stability, etc.
and then the data that needed for each type of power converters
will be obtained. As discussed in the experimental results, the
communication speed is limited, therefore, the above data will
be assigned a priority weight, and the most important data will
have the high priority to be transmitted. Advanced distributed
control algorithms for DC micro-grids, such as enhanced
current sharing control [5] or Multi-Agent System (MAS)
based distributed control method [12], could be implemented
without external communication links.
V. CONCLUSION
The contribution of this paper is to study the development of an
PLC strategy for DC MGs using the converter’s switching
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frequency at the output voltage ripple. Based on the SFM-
DBCS, the limitations of the conventional methods such as
additional circuit or inaccuracy of control signal for load
sharing can be overcome and the communication reliability in
the power line can be improved. By using the SFM-DBCS, the
power flow information of the DC MG can be shared with
other converters connected to the common DC bus.
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