IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 52, NO.

3, JUNE 2005

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High-Performance Online UPS Using Three-Leg-Type Converter

Jin-Ha Choi, Jung-Min Kwon, Jee-Hoon Jung, and Bong-Hwan Kwon, Member, IEEE
AbstractA high-performance single-phase online uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is proposed. The UPS is composed of a three-leg-type converter which operates as a battery charger and an inverter. The rst leg is controlled to charge the battery, and the third leg is controlled to make the output voltage. The common leg is controlled in line frequency. The charger and the inverter are controlled independently. The charger has the capability of power-factor correction while charging a battery. The inverter regulates output voltage and limits output current under an impulsive load. The three-leg-type converter reduces the number of switching devices. As a result, the system has less power loss and a low-cost structure. In the determination of the charger voltage, the nominal voltage is derived using the feedback linearization concept and then a perturbed voltage is determined for the reactive power control. The disturbance of input voltage is detected using a fast sensing technique of the input voltage. Experimental results obtained with a 3-VA prototype show a normal efciency of over 87% and an input power factor of over 99%. Index TermsBattery charger, power-factor correction (PFC), uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

I. INTRODUCTION

NINTERRUPTIBLE power supplies (UPSs) are used to supply clean and uninterrupted power to critical loads, such as computers, comunication systems, and medical support systems, etc. As such sensitive equipment is used worldwide, their interruption due to a power failure may lead to critical accidents. The UPS system is indispensible for this reason. The recent increase in the use of nonlinear loads caused serious concern for power quality and, consequently, on the disturbances tolerated by sensitive electronic loads. IEEE Standard 4461987 [1] describes the voltage tolerance limits for sensitive loads, such as computer power supplies. In IEEE Standard 4461987, shown in Table I, a voltage drop of more than 15% cannot be tolerated for more than 30 cycles (or 500 ms). Similarly, a 35% voltage drop can be tolerated for only one cycle (or 16.7 ms). In addition, power factor can be tolerated for over 0.8. In an effort to meet these requirements, voltage regulation and power-factor correction (PFC) have become very important. A typical single-phase converter shown in Fig. 1(a) has four legs; two of them are used for a rectier/battery charger, and the
Manuscript received June 11, 2003; revised September 1, 2004. Abstract published on the Internet March 14, 2005. J.-H. Choi was with the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 790-784, Korea . He is now with LG Electronics Company Ltd., Seoul 150-721, Korea (e-mail: pwrdean@lge.com). J.-M. Kwon, J.-H. Jung, and B.-H. Kwon are with the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 790-784, Korea (e-mail: bhkwon@postech.ac.kr). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TIE.2005.847575

others for an inverter. To improve this, a three-leg-type converter shown in Fig. 1(b) is proposed. According to the recent literature [2][9], a three-leg-type converter is developed in many ways. The most surpassing feature is that power losses can be decreased by using a common leg for both the pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) rectier and PWM inverter. In addition, the system can have excellent input and output characteristics. The proposed system has such characteristics as high efciency, high power factor, and fast response to input and output disturbances. The disturbance of the input voltage, such as overvoltage and undervoltage, can cause a system trip and hardware equipment failure. To overcome these, fast detection of input voltage disturbances and a fast output voltage compensation technique are necessary to achieve good output voltage regulation. Here, we propose a fast output voltage controller by utilizing a fast input voltage detection method and a feedforward controller. This paper also proposes a new output voltage recovery technique under an impulsive load [10]. By using leakage transformers, universal ltering is implemented without any additional passive lters [11]. Experimental results of a 3-kVA prototype show the performance of the proposed UPS. From the experimental results, it can be seen that a maximum overall efciency of 87% and a power factor of 99% can be obtained. Moreover, the input and output characteristics have good steady-state and dynamic performance. The main advantages of the proposed approach are: 1) the rectier works as an active lter and thus eliminate harmonics created by nonlinear loads; 2) the inverter regulates output voltage under any disturbance; 3) it possesses high efciency and high power factor; and 4) there is current-limiting capability for impulsive loads. II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION Fig. 2(a) shows the conguration of the single-phase UPS using a three-leg-type converter. The proposed UPS uses leakage transformers to reduce cost. The leakage inductance of the leakage transformer is utilized as an inductor of the LC lter without using additional inductors. The leakage inductance of the leakage transformer should be designed to have reasonable value; otherwise, an additional inductance must be added in series with the transformer. The leakage inductance can be handled by controlling the separation degree of the primary winding and secondary winding of the transformer. Tight coupling of the primary winding and the secondary winding reduces the leakage inductance of the transformer. The input and output capacitors are simultaneously utilized as a capacitor of the LC lters for the charger and inverter. Thus, the UPS has universal ltering capabilities to act as a line-voltage lter, an

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TABLE I TYPICAL RANGE OF INPUT POWER QUALITY AND LOAD PARAMETERS OF MAJOR COMPUTER MANUFACTURERS

Fig. 1. Single-phase converters. (a) Conventional converter with four legs. (b) Three-leg-type converter.

output-voltage stabilizer, a backup voltage lter, and an active lter compensating for the reactive current. Fig. 2(b) shows the three-leg-type converter using leakage transformers. In the three-leg circuit of Fig. 2(b), the rectier leg and the common leg operate as a PWM rectier (boost converter) and, at the same time, the common leg and the inverter

leg operate as a PWM inverter (buck converter). By using the common leg, the system can reduce one switching leg compared with the conventional four-leg variety. Due to reduced devices and a simpler structure, it can provide low cost and small size. The operation of the proposed UPS can be divided into eight modes. When the input voltage is normal, the operation is di-

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Fig. 2. Congurations of the proposed UPS. (a) Proposed UPS. (b) Three-leg-type converter using leakage transformers.

vided into four modes, as shown in Fig. 3. The others are inverter/backup modes. Mode 1 and Mode 2 show the current ows and switching states during the positive half cycle of the input voltage, and Mode 3 and Mode 4 vice versa. Since the common leg is switched by the polarity of the input voltage, the is consistently turned on during the positive cycle, switch while the switch is turned on during the negative cycle. In and are turned on. Then, the Mode 1, the lower switches inductor current increases in a positive direction and the mag. Mode 1a and Mode 1b are deternetic energy is stored in mined by the switching state of the unipolar PWM strategy in the inverter leg. If is turned on in Mode 1a, the dc-link voltage is applied to the load and ows toward the load. Since the switch is turned on in Mode 1b, a zero voltage is applied to and the load, and the output current is freewheeling through . In Mode 2, the switch is off and is on. Next, the energy is transferred to the dc-link stage. Since the posistored in tive voltage is applied to the load in Mode 2a, the dc link is discharged by the amount of the output current . Therefore, it charges the dc link during the can be seen that the current Mode 2a. In Mode 2b, zero voltage is applied to the load and the output current is freewheeling, as in Mode 1b. Similarly, Mode 3 and Mode 4 show the operation modes during the negative half cycle of the input voltage. Obviously, Fig. 2 shows that only the current ows through the common leg in amount of

is battery charging current. The on-loss each mode, where of the common leg switches is further reduced. The other modes are inverter modes. If the input voltage is lost, only the inverter is operating without charging the battery. The modes also use a unipolar PWM strategy. The operation is straightforward. III. SYSTEM ANALYSIS A. Active Power Filter Mode of the Charger The charger in Fig. 2(b) acts to compensate for the reactive current required by the load connected on the output side, thereby reecting a linear load to the input, while charging the battery. The common leg is switched at low switching frequency depending on the sign of the input voltage. It is assumed that the inductor current is continuous. In the case of positive half cycle and are turned on of the input voltage, if the switches (Mode 1), the inductor current increases and magnetic energy is stored in the inductor. Similarly, in the negative cycle, the and are turned on (Mode 2) to increase the inswitches ductor current in opposite direction. Thus, the following voltage equation is satised: (1) where and and are the source voltage and current, respectively, is the inductance of the leakage transformer.

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Fig. 3. Operation modes of the proposed UPS.

In the positive cycle, if the switches and are turned on (Mode 3), the energy stored in the inductor is transferred to the dc link. In the same manner, in the negative cycle, the switches and are turned on (Mode 4) to release the energy to the dc-link capacitor. Then, (2) where is the dc-link voltage, is the turns ratio denotes the sign of . It is of the transformer , and under unity-power-factor control. noted that

of the switch and of Depending on the duty ratio the switch , the average inductor voltage over one switching gives the following source current variation : period (3) (4) and can be considered to be The duty ratios half cycle. Let the duty ratio be represented by in each (5)

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Fig. 4.

Proposed power-factor controller of the active power lter mode.

which is composed of a nominal duty ratio and a perturbed . Then, the nominal duty ratio and the perduty ratio can be represented as turbed duty ratio (6) (7) and are the peak source voltage and angular where generates frequency, respectively. The nominal duty ratio voltage for a feedback linearization of the original nonlinear is used to system. By contrast, the perturbed duty ratio control the current required by the inverter. To force the current of the charger to track its current command , the current controller is utilized as follows: (8) where is the current control gain. Let be the average charging current over the line period . Then, total real power of the system is composed of the power for charging the battery and the output average power given by (9) Therefore, the average input current becomes where is the peak value of the input voltage. Then the reference current for the input current of the charger in Fig. 2(a) is computed as (10) is required for charging the The current component battery and the component for compensating reactive current . Fig. 4 shows the proposed control algorithms is of the current of the active power lter mode. The output controller only generates the inductor voltage drop required to maintain the sinusoidal source current. With the addition of the to the rectier which is originally a nonlinear nominal duty and output dynamic system, the relation between the input of the rectier becomes a rst-order linear dynamic system (7) with easy controllability. Thus, the addition of the nominal relaxes the burden of the current controller and imduty proves the input current waveform.
Fig. 5. Peak voltage detectors. (a) Conventional peak voltage detector. (b) Fast peak voltage detector.

With loss of the input power, the static bypass switch is opened and the charger is disabled. The inverter operates in backup mode (or inverter mode) and supplies power to the load using the battery. The unipolar PWM switching scheme is used for the inverter. It results in a better output voltage waveform and in a better frequency response than the bipolar PWM switching scheme, since the effective switching frequency of the output voltage waveform is doubled and the ripple is reduced. The common leg is switched at the line frequency synchronized to the input voltage, as previously stated. B. Fast Detection of the Input Voltage With loss of input power, the UPS must transfer instantly to the backup mode to minimize a transient effect on the output voltage. To accomplish this, a fast detection technique of the input voltage is required. In general, the conventional peak voltage detector with diodes, capacitor, and resistor is used as a voltage sensing circuit, as shown in Fig. 5(a). When the input signal is decreased, the capacitor is discharged through the resistor and when increased, the capacitor is charged directly. Therefore, the charging speed is faster than the discharging one. Reducing the resistance increases the discharge speed. However, the ripple current of the detected signal is increased. A fast detection technique of the input voltage is shown in Fig. 5(b) which is composed of a phase shifter, two multipliers, and an adder. The detection technique utilizes the simple trigonometric theorem as follows: (11) The phase shifter delays its input waveform by 90 , i.e., the cosine waveform of the input voltage is converted to the sine waveform, and each waveform is multiplied and added. The sensed of the input voltage then becomes signal voltage (12) is the detection gain of the input voltage. Thus, the where can represent the magnitude of the input detector output voltage.

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Fig. 6. Control block diagram of the inverter.

Consider a digitized implementation of the detection algorithm of the input voltage. The 90 phase shifter of the input voltage with the angular frequency has the transfer characteristic of the rst-order all-pass lter as follows: (13) Using the following bilinear transformation: (14) where is the sample period, the transfer function of the phase shifter in the discrete domain is given by (15) of the phase shifter in the discreteTherefore, the output time domain can be obtained as follows: (16) where (17) Thus, the algorithm (12) for detecting the input-voltage magand the nitude can be calculated using the input voltage of the 90 phase shifter. output signal C. Current-Limiting Technique Under the Impulsive Load Fig. 6 shows the inverter control block diagram. The output voltage is regulated through the proportionalintegral (PI)-type voltage controller. The proposed current limiter consists of two operation modes: a normal mode and an overcurrent mode. The two modes are decided by the value of the output current. When is lower than the limthe absolute value of the output current , the inverter operates in normal mode. ited current value In this mode, the duty of the inverter is determined as (18) is the output of the voltage controller and is where obtained from the sine lookup table. Due to the sinusoidal refer, the inverter generates sinusoidal output voltage in ence normal mode. When the impulsive load such as a capacitive rectier load is attached, the inverter supplies excessive current to

Fig. 7.

Control algorithm of output current limiter.

charge the load capacitor. This excessive current may damage the switching devices in the inverter. If a large current is detected, the current limiter reduces the output voltage reference. A fast p-type controller reduces the reference value and holds the reference value during a half cycle, then the capacitor is charged to some degree without increasing the current. As the

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Fig. 8. Overall block diagram of proposed UPS.

capacitor is fully charged in some cycles, no further impulsive current ows through the inverter. Then, the inverter operates in normal mode. The output voltage is recovered to its rated value. The detailed algorithm of the current limiter is shown in Fig. 7. As the p-type controller is used, various impulsive loads can be attached to the system. The system will recover its rated output value immediately thereafter. IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS In a microprocessor-based control system, software exibility facilitates the development and updating of the control technique and uses control theory to obtain high performance. Moreover, a single-chip microcontroller can implement the controller with a lower cost and smaller size than the general-purpose microprocessor with accompanying external circuits such as an A/D converter, D/A converter, and PWM generator. The overall control block diagram of the single-phase online UPS is implemented using a single-chip microcontroller Intel 80196 MH, as shown in Fig. 8. The switching times of each device are implemented in software and PWM pulses are generated through the pulse generator of the microcontroller. Voltage or current signals are measured by using the 10-bit analog-to-digital converter in the microcontroller. The implementation of the voltage or current controllers and PWM pulse s. generation is performed every sample period The overall system is divided into two parts: the controller and power circuit. The controller part includes the microcontroller running the control algorithms and driver circuits. The power circuit is implemented as in Fig. 8. The rating of

TABLE II SYSTEM PARAMETERS OF THE PROPOSED UPS USED FOR EXPERIMENT

the proposed UPS is designed for up to 3 kVA with 60-Hz 220-V nominal input/output voltages. To handle this power rating, 50-A/600-V insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are selected as power semiconductor switches. These power semiconductor switches are operated with a carrier frequency of 15 kHz and a dead time of 2 s. The system parameters used for the experiment are given in Table II. The experimental waveforms of input and output signals of the input voltage detector for 20% line voltage disturbance are shown in Fig. 9. This voltage detector gives a fast response to the voltage sag due to line voltage disturbance. As the inverter operates independently of the line status, the UPS transfers seamless power to the load from the battery in line fault state. Upon the return of the input power, the UPS transfers back to the active lter mode while charging the battery. In this transition, a fast transfer time is not required. The output voltage is slowly adjusted to be in phase with the line voltage using a phase-locked loop. Once synchronism is achieved and the magnitude of the input voltage is in the working range, the

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Fig. 9. Input and output signals of the input voltage detector for 20% line voltage disturbance.

Fig. 11.

Compensated output voltage and current under impulsive load.

generates output independently on line voltage from the battery, and the UPS transfers uninterrupted power to the load. The experimental results validate that the proposed current-limiting algorithm has quick voltage recovery characteristics under an impulsive load. The fast input voltage detector also improves the dynamic response of the output voltage. As the detector gives a fast output response to the voltage sag, it is adequate for the UPS demanding fast input disturbance detection. The experimental results also show that the proposed UPS gives good dynamic and steady-state performance. REFERENCES
[1] IEEE Recommended Practice for Emergency and Standby Power Systems for Industrial and Commercial Applications, IEEE Standard 4461987, 1987. [2] N. Hirao, T. Satonaga, T. Uematsu, T. Kohama, T. Ninomiya, and M. Shoyama, Analytical considerations on power loss in a three-arm-type uninterruptible power supply, in Proc. IEEE PESC98, 1998, pp. 18861891. [3] S. J. Chiang, T. S. Lee, and J. M. Chang, Design and implementation of a single phase three-arms rectier inverter, Proc. IEEElect. Power Appl., vol. 147, no. 5, pp. 379384, Sep. 2000. [4] T. Uematsu, T. Ikeda, N. Hirao, S. Totsuka, T. Ninomiya, and H. Kawamoto, A study of the high performance single phase UPS, in Proc. IEEE PESC98, 1998, pp. 18721878. [5] I. Ando, I. Takahashi, Y. Tanaka, and M. Ikchara, Development of a high efciency UPS having active lter ability composed of a three arms bridge, in Proc. IEEE IECON97, 1997, pp. 804809. [6] I. Youichi, I. Satoru, T. Isao, and H. Hitoshi, New power conversion technique to obtain high performance and high efciency for single-phase UPS, in Conf. Rec. IEEE-IAS Annu. Meeting, 2001, pp. 23832388. [7] H. Pinheiro, R. Blume, and P. Jain, Space vector modulation for single phase on-line three-leg UPS, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Industrial Electronics, Control and Instrumentation, 2000, pp. 679689. [8] B. Francois, P. Delarue, A. Bouscayrol, and J. Niiranen, Five-leg ac-ac power converter: Structure, modeling, and control, in Conf. Rec. IEEE-IAS Annu. Meeting, Rome, Italy, 2000. [9] B.-R. Lin and D.-J. Chen, Implementation of a single-phase three-leg AC/AC converter with neutral-point diode-clamped scheme, Proc. IEEElect. Power Appl., vol. 149, no. 6, pp. 423432, Nov. 2002. [10] Y. Yang, J. Liu, and D. Zhou, Pulse by pulse current limiting technique for SPWM inverters, in Proc. IEEE PEDS99, 1999, pp. 10211026. [11] F. Kamran and T. G. Habetler, A novel on-line UPS with universal ltering capabilties, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 410418, May 1998. [12] A. V. Zyl, J. H. R. Enslin, W. H. Steyn, and R. Spee, A new unied approach to power quality management, in Proc. IEEE PESC95, 1995, pp. 183188.

Fig. 10.

Input current and voltage waveforms of proposed UPS.

UPS starts to operate in the active lter mode while the magnetic contactor (MC) connects the line to the charger. Fig. 10 shows the input voltage and the input current of the UPS under a linear load. In this case, the input current of the UPS is the sum of the charging current for the battery and the load current. The line current is exactly in phase with the input line voltage and nearly sinusoidal. Thus, the input power factor approaches unity. The result measured by the power meter shows that the total efciency of the UPS is 87% and the power factor is 99%. Fig. 11 shows the output voltage and the output current, respectively, when the UPS is impacted by a capacitive rectier load F). From the experimental waveforms, it is ob( served that if a current-limiting technique is employed, the UPS fullls the impulsive loading quickly. In addition, it can be seen that its rated output voltage is recovered within 2 cycles of the fundamental line period. V. CONCLUDING REMARKS We have proposed an improved single-phase online UPS which uses a three-leg-type converter. The proposed UPS combines low cost with excellent performance. The inverter

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Jin-Ha Choi was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1972. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electronic and electrical engineering from Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Korea, in 1996, 1998, and 2003, respectively. Since 2004, he has been with the DA Laboratory of LG Electronics Company Ltd., Seoul, Korea, where he is currently a Researcher. His research interests are UPSs, motor drives, power converter/inverter systems, and microprocessor applications.

Jee-Hoon Jung was born in Suwon, Korea, in 1977. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in 2000 and 2002, respectively, from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Korea, where he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in electronic and electrical engineering. His research interests include motor drives and diagnosis, control and signal processing with microprocessors, and switch-mode power supplies.

Jung-Min Kwon was born in Ulsan, Korea, in 1981. He received the B.S. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 2004. He is currently working toward the M.S. degree in electronic and electrical engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Korea. His research interests are photovoltaic systems and power supplies.

Bong-Hwan Kwon (M91) was born in Pohang, Korea, in 1958. He received the B.S. degree from Kyungbuk National University, Taegu, Korea, in 1982, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, Korea, in 1984 and 1987, respectively. Since 1987, he has been with the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Korea, where he is currently a Professor. His research interests are motor drives, high-frequency converters, and switch-mode power supplies.