Expert Systems with Applications 37 (2010) 77967801

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Expert Systems with Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

A PSO based optimal switching technique for voltage harmonic reduction of multilevel inverter
Rup Narayan Ray a, Debashis Chatterjee b,*, Swapan Kumar Goswami b
a b

National Institute of Technology, Agartala, Tripura 799055, India Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700032, India

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Selected lower order harmonics of multilevel inverter are eliminated while the overall voltage THD is optimized by computing the switching angles using particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique. The discontinuity in the solution of selected harmonic elimination (SHE) problem at certain modulation indices is avoided by optimizing the individual harmonics to allowable limits. While choosing the set of solution leading to minimum THD, the abrupt changes in the switching angles are discarded by limiting the voltage THD within allowable limits. Also the selected higher order harmonics are eliminated by additional switching along with the lower order harmonics. In order to reduce the computational burden for online application, the switching angles computed by the proposed PSO technique for optimum THD at varying modulation indices are stored as a look-up table in the DSP memory. The simulated results are also validated through suitable experiments. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Particle swarm optimization (PSO) Selected harmonic elimination (SHE) Multilevel inverter Total harmonic distortion (THD)

1. Introduction A multilevel inverter is useful for high power application at higher voltage level by connecting different dc sources of lower voltage level (Menzies, Steimer, & Steinke, 1994; Tolbert, Peng, & Habetler, 1999). The desired ac voltage is synthesized from several dc sources by cascading individual inverters (Lai & Peng, 1996). Multilevel inverters can be used to interconnect several distributed generations (DG) like solar, fuel cell, rectied output of wind energy with the ac grid. However, the main concern is eliminating the harmonics from the output voltage of multilevel inverter. The output voltage of the inverter must meet maximum THD limitations as specied in Duffey and Stratford, 1989. There are several methods used for harmonic elimination. Traditional SHE PWM method is widely used (Carrara, Gardella, Marchesoni, Salutari, & Sciutto, 1992; Enjeti, Ziogas, & Lindsay, 1990; Hammond, 1997; Loh, Holmes, & Lipo, 2005). Carrier based PWM technique is also reported (Tolbert & Habetler, 1999; Holmes & McGrath, 2001). But with these methods, higher order harmonics of the output voltage are not completely eliminated though the lower order harmonics are efciently eliminated. To address the problem of higher order harmonics, an active harmonic elimination technique (Du, Tolbert, & Chiasson, 2006) has been proposed. In this method,

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 9433887966; fax: +91 3324132384. E-mail addresses: rupnarayan_r@yahoo.co.in (R.N. Ray), debashisju@yahoo.com (D. Chatterjee), skgoswami_ju@yahoo.co.in (S.K. Goswami). 0957-4174/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2010.04.060

the resultant theory (Chiasson, Tolbert, Mckenzie, & Du, 2003) is rst applied to transcendental equations characterizing the harmonic contents to eliminate low order harmonics like 5th, 7th, 11th and 13th and to determine switching angles for the fundamental frequency switching. Next, the residual higher order harmonics are eliminated by generating a square wave (one for each of these harmonics) with additional switching angles whose fundamental is the opposite of the harmonic that is to be eliminated. Though the method is effective, the required number of switching is substantially high for the elimination of increased higher order harmonics. Moreover, at certain points of modulation indices, there are discontinuities in the solution. In Jiang and Lipo (2000) the dc link voltage of the multilevel inverter is optimized while a genetic algorithm is used for harmonic optimization in Ozpineci, Tolbert, and Chiasson (2004). Previously reported work (Chiasson et al., 2003) shows that the transcendental equations characterizing the SHE problem can be converted into polynomial equations that can be solved using the resultant theory. Further as degree of polynomials increases with the number of dc sources or order of harmonics to be eliminated, the theory of symmetric polynomials (Chiasson, Tolbert, Mckenzie, & Du, 2005) is exploited to reduce the degree of polynomial equations that can reduce the computational burden. With reduced degree of polynomials, an online computation method for the switching angles has been proposed with all multiple solutions. But since the solutions are having discontinuity at certain points (Chiasson et al., 2005; Du et al., 2006), it is difcult for the controller to generate possible switching angles at those points. Moreover,

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the additional switchings required to eliminate higher order harmonics will be considerably high causing high switching losses. In this paper, a PSO (Kennedy & Eberhart, 1995) based technique is suggested to minimize the overall THD of the output voltage of a multilevel inverter. The objective function derived from the SHE problem is minimized using PSO algorithm, to compute the switching angles while lower order harmonics are eliminated. Besides eliminating lower order harmonics, the selected higher order harmonics are optimized to contribute minimum voltage THD by using additional switching angles. Since in the proposed method, the optimum THD is computed at different modulation indices eliminating selected order of harmonics, the problem of discontinuity in solution of nonlinear function is avoided. But at certain points, the computed switching angles leading to minimum voltage THD shows abrupt variations. At those points, a small compromise between additional voltage THD and linearisation of switching angles is made to facilitate online application. The proposed method is also capable of nding all possible sets of solution of the nonlinear equations (Chiasson, Tolbert, Mckenzie, & Du, 2004). The combinations of switching angles corresponding to minimum voltage THD at sufciently close points of modulation indices with consideration of linearity between two successive points are stored in a DSP memory for online application. 2. Harmonic elimination technique A higher level ac voltage can be synthesized by cascading several lower level inverters supplied from equal or unequal dc sources. This conguration is known as multilevel conguration of inverters. A single-phase structure of a cascade multilevel inverter is shown in Fig. 1. In case of equal dc sources Vdc1 = Vdc2 . . . = Vdcn = Vdc. The synthesized ac output voltage waveform is the sum of all the individual inverter outputs. The number of output phase voltage levels of cascade multilevel inverter is 2N + 1, where N is the number of dc sources. An output voltage waveform of a 7level cascade multilevel inverter with three dc sources is shown in Fig. 2. 2.1. Conventional method The output voltage waveform V(t) of the multilevel inverter as shown in Fig. 2 can be represented by (1)

Fig. 2. Output voltage waveform of a 7-level multilevel inverter.

The even harmonics are absent (bn = 0) due to quarter wave symmetry of the output voltage (Mohan, Undeland, & Robbins, 2003). The n-th harmonic an is expressed with the rst quadrant switching angles a1, a2, . . .am.

an 4V dc =np
and

m X k1

cosnak

0 < a1 < a2 < . . . am < p=2

For any odd harmonics, (2) can be expanded up to the k-th term where m is the number of variables corresponding to switching angles a1 through am of the rst quadrant.In selected harmonic elimination, an is assigned the desired value for fundamental component and equated to zero for the harmonics to be eliminated (Holmes & Lipo, 2003).

a1 4V dc =p

m X

cos ak M cos 5ak 0 4

a5 4V dc =5p

k1 m X k 1

an 4V dc =np

. . . m X
k 1

cosnak 0

V t

1 X n1

an sin nan bn cos nan

where M is the amplitude of the fundamental component. Nonlinear transcendental equations are thus formed and after solving these equations, a1 through ak are computed. Triplen harmonics are eliminated in three-phase balanced system and these are not considered in (4). It is evident that (m 1) harmonics can be eliminated with m number of switching angles. These nonlinear equations show multiple solutions and the main difculty is its discontinuity at certain points where no set of solution is available (Chiasson et al., 2003, 2004). This limitation is addressed in the present method to ease the online application at these points of discontinuity. 2.2. Proposed PSO method The PSO methodology is a very powerful tool for optimization of nonlinear functions. The method was discovered through simulation of a simplied social model viz. bird ocking, sh schooling, etc. (Kennedy & Eberhart, 1995) and presently being used in many applications for optimization of nonlinear equations. The simplied PSO approach is as follows: The variables of the objective function are randomized rst. By iterations, the pbest (present best) and gbest (global best) values of the variables are computed. The velocity vector VX for variable Xis then computed using the formula

Fig. 1. Single-phase conguration of a multilevel inverter.

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VX W VX C 1 randpbestX presentX C 2 randgbestX presentX X X VX 5:a 5:b

where C1and C2 are the constants within the range of 1 and 2, pbestX, gbestX and present X are pbest, gbest and present values of variable X respectively, W is the inertia weight, the value of which is chosen depending upon the type of problem and search criteria. A larger value of inertia weight W facilitates global exploration while a smaller inertia weight tends to facilitate local exploration to ne tune the current search area. Suitable selection of the inertia weight W can provide a balance between global and local exploration abilities and thus require less iteration on average to nd the optima. The rand stands for random value in the range [0, 1]. New pbest and gbest values of the variables are computed incorporating the velocity vector VX according to (5.b). Finally, the nonlinear function converges at pbest = gbest after the extensive search within each generation that consists of considerable number of populations. The main advantage of this method is that unlike other iterative methods it does not require any initial guess of the variables for convergence. The conventional SHE technique for multilevel inverter has the disadvantage of complexity to solve the nonlinear transcendental equations that have multiple solutions. Moreover, at certain points, no solutions are available to satisfy these equations. In the proposed PSO method, the complexity of nding the solution of these nonlinear equations is avoided by converting the SHE problem to an optimization problem. The %THD of the output voltage can be computed using (6).
1 1 X %THD 2 an2 a1 n5

"

#1=2 100 6

where n = 6i 1 (i = 1,2,3, . . .). In the developed PSO algorithm, the same expression of the voltage THD is considered as the objective function F(a) and minimized with the constraints of individual harmonics limits and minimal variations of switching angles. The formulation of the problem will be as follows:

Minimize F a F a1 ; a2 ; . . . am

7
Fig. 3. Flowchart of proposed PSO algorithm.

Subject to : 0 < a1 < a2 < . . . am < p=2; a1 M ; a5  e1; a7  e2; . . . an  en;

where e1, e2, . . .en are the allowable limits of individual harmonics. In the present approach, selected lower order harmonics are eliminated and multiple solutions are found where exist. At those points of multiple solutions, the set of switching angles a1 through ak are considered which have no major variations as compared to previous values. It is found that at certain modulation indices, the set of switching angles corresponding to minimum voltage THD shows abrupt changes, which is avoided by taking the possible minimum THD at those points. Next, to eliminate the selected higher order harmonics in addition to the low order harmonics, additional switching is used. A owchart of the PSO algorithm is shown in Fig. 3. With a considerable number of generations and large number of population in each generation, the algorithm searches for all probable set of solutions and nally compute the angles a1 through

am to contribute either the lowest THD or next to the lowest one based on changes in the switching angles, keeping the individual harmonics within the limits as specied by (7). Also at the modulation indices of discontinuity, the switching angles a1 through am are computed based on possible minimum voltage THD optimizing the individual harmonics.
2.3. Problem of discontinuity and multiple solutions The solution of the SHE problem shows discontinuity at certain modulation indices when the selected individual harmonics are set to zero (Chiasson et al., 2003). In the proposed method, the coefcients of the selected harmonics are set to minimum possible values at those points of discontinuities so as to nd a solution. This facilitates the controller to generate the online pulses. The switching angles corresponding to minimum voltage THD for varying modulation indices (md) are stored as look-up table in the memory of the processor for online application. Thus the situation of discontinuity of solution at certain points is avoided. Also there are multiple sets of solution of angle a1 through am at certain modulation indices when the nonlinear equations of SHE

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problem are solved directly (Chiasson et al., 2005). The computed THD at these points will be minimum only for a specic set of solution. However the computation of the switching angles shows that at some operating points, abrupt changes of angles occurs if minimum THD criterion is always maintained. The overall THD is kept within the allowable limits instead of its minimum value at those points to avoid any abrupt change of switching angles, which may be unsuitable for online application. The multiple solutions are found by suitably changing the appropriate PSO parameters. 3. Simulation results The proposed scheme has been simulated in Matlab/Simulink environment. For three dc sources, the multiple sets of angles present within the modulation index range of 0.650.75, eliminating 5th and 7th harmonics are computed. The switching patterns and corresponding voltage THD against modulation index are shown in Figs. 4 and 5 respectively. Consideration of minimum voltage THD does not lead to any abrupt changes in the computed switching angles in case of 7-level inverter. For a 7-level inverter, a comparison of the voltage THD (%) up to 31st order between fundamental switching and that with additional four switching per quarter cycle against varying md is shown in Fig. 6. Multiple sets of angle a1a5 for 11-level inverter eliminating 5th, 7th, 11th and 13th harmonics in the range of modulation index 0.65 0.89 are computed and shown in Fig. 7. The corresponding voltage THD against the modulation index for multiple solutions is shown in Fig. 8. However, it is found that a single set of solution does not lead to minimum voltage THD at all modulation indices. The switching angles corresponding to minimum voltage THD considering both sets of solution is shown in Fig. 9, which shows abrupt changes in the pattern. To avoid the abrupt changes in the angles, the possible minimum THD within allowable limits at those modulation indices are considered and the optimal switching angle pattern is shown in Fig. 10. Additional six switching per quarter cycle is used to eliminate higher order harmonics along with lower order harmonics of 5th, 7th, 11th and 13th. A comparison of THD for fundamental considering optimal and additional switching is shown in Fig. 11. 4. Experimental results The proposed scheme is experimentally veried with the help of DSP TMS320F2407A of Texas Instruments for generation of PWM pulses for the individual inverters to generate multilevel voltage output at minimum THD. A spectrum analyzer of TEKTRONIX make, Model No. RSA3303A, was used for recording the harmonic content of the voltage waveform and measuring the

Fig. 5. Voltage THD corresponding to multiple solutions versus modulation index for 7-level inverter.

Fig. 6. Comparison of voltage THD for fundamental and additional switching in 7level inverter.

Fig. 7. Switching angles corresponding to multiple solutions versus modulation index for 11-level inverter.

Fig. 4. Switching angles versus modulation index including multiple solutions for 7-level inverter.

THD up to 31st harmonics since the contribution of higher order harmonics beyond 31st are less signicant. The computed switching angles against varying md are stored in the DSP memory for online application. Piecewise linear interpolation technique is employed to compute the switching patterns between two successive values of md, which is 0.02 in our experiment. In Fig. 12, the output voltage waveform of a 7-level inverter with additional four switching per quarter cycle at md of 0.9 is shown while Fig. 13 shows the line current waveform of a three-phase star connected cage rotor induction motor of 2 hp, 415 V, 50 Hz, 1460 rpm, 4-pole;

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Fig. 8. Voltage THD corresponding to multiple solutions versus modulation index for 11-level inverter.

Fig. 12. Output voltage waveform for 7-level inverter with additional switching at md = 0.9.

Fig. 9. Switching angles versus modulation index for 11-level inverter considering lowest THD.

Fig. 13. Current waveform with induction motor load for 7-level inverter with additional switching. Fig. 10. Optimal switching angles versus modulation index for 11-level inverter.

Fig. 14. Harmonics spectrum of current waveform with induction motor load.

Fig. 11. Comparison of voltage THDs for fundamental and additional switching in 11-level inverter.

fed from this inverter at full load. The waveform of the line current is found to be almost sinusoidal and the corresponding harmonics spectrum of the same is shown in Fig. 14. The harmonics spectrum

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control of multilevel inverter supplied from different dc sources. The same is also validated by suitable experiment. References
Carrara, G., Gardella, S., Marchesoni, M., Salutari, R., & Sciutto, G. (1992). A new multilevel PWM method: A theoretical analysis. IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, 7(4), 497505. Chiasson, J. N., Tolbert, L. M., Mckenzie, K. J., & Du, Z. (2003). Control of a multilevel converter using resultant theory. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 11(3), 345354. Chiasson, J. N., Tolbert, L. M., Mckenzie, K. J., & Du, Z. (2004). A complete solution to the harmonic elimination problem. IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, 19(2), 491499. Chiasson, J. N., Tolbert, L. M., Mckenzie, K. J., & Du, Z. (2005). Elimination of harmonics in a multilevel converter using the theory of symmetric polynomials and resultants. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 13(2), 216 223. Du, Z., Tolbert, L. M., & Chiasson, J. N. (2006). Active harmonic elimination for multilevel Converters. IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, 21(2), 459469. Duffey, C. K., & Stratford, R. P. (1989). Update of harmonic standard IEEE-519: IEEE recommended practices and requirements for harmonic control in electric power systems. IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, 25(6), 10251034. Enjeti, P. N., Ziogas, P. D., & Lindsay, F. (1990). Programmed PWM techniques to eliminate harmonics: A critical evaluation. IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, 26(2), 302316. Hammond, P. (1997). A new approach to enhance power quality for medium voltage ac drives. IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, 33(1), 202208. Holmes, D. G., & Lipo, T. A. (2003). Pulse width modulation for power converters: Principles and practice. NJ: IEEE Press. Holmes, D. G., & McGrath, B. P. (2001). Opportunities for harmonic cancellation with carrier based PWM for two-level and multilevel cascaded inverters. IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, 37(2), 574582. Jiang, Z., & Lipo, T. A. (2000). Switching angles and dc link voltage optimization for multilevel cascade inverters. Electric Machines and Power Systems, 28(7), 605612. Kennedy, J., & Eberhart, R. (1995). Particle swarm optimization. In Proceedings IEEE international conference on neural networks, Perth, Australia (Vol. IV, pp. 1942 1948). Lai, J. S., & Peng, F. Z. (1996). Multilevel converters A new breed of power converters. IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, 32(3), 509517. Loh, P. C., Holmes, D. G., & Lipo, T. A. (2005). Implementation and control of distributed PWM cascaded multilevel inverters with minimum harmonic distortion and common mode voltages. IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, 20(1), 9099. Menzies, W., Steimer, P., & Steinke, J. K. (1994). Five-level GTO inverters for large induction motor drives. IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, 30(4), 938944. Mohan, N., Undeland, T. M., & Robbins, W. P. (2003). Power electronics: Converters, applications and design. New York: Wiley. Ozpineci, B., Tolbert, L. M., & Chiasson, J. N. (2004). Harmonic optimization of multilevel converters using genetic algorithms. In Proceedings IEEE power electronics specialists conference (pp. 39113916. Tolbert, L. M., & Habetler, T. G. (1999). Novel multilevel inverter carrier based PWM methods. IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, 35(5), 10981107. Tolbert, L. M., Peng, F. Z., & Habetler, T. G. (1999). Multilevel converters for large electric drives. IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, 35(1), 3644.

Fig. 15. Voltage THD versus modulation index for 11-level inverter with additional switching.

of line current as shown in Fig. 14 contains a small amount of 17th, 19th, 23rd and a negligible amount of 13th harmonics due to their presence in the line voltage spectrum. However, with more number of additional switching, these harmonics can also be eliminated. In Fig. 15, a comparison of the simulated and experimental values of voltage THD against varying md is shown for an 11-level inverter using six additional switching per quarter cycle which is in good conformity. 5. Conclusion A PSO based optimization technique is proposed to minimize the overall THD of the output voltage of a multilevel inverter. While computing the switching angles with the help of developed algorithm, all the multiple solutions are found wherever exist. However no unique solution exists for minimum voltage THD at all modulation indices. If minimum voltage THD condition is fullled considering all sets of solution, the switching angle pattern varies abruptly at certain points. Therefore an optimal switching pattern is considered without any abrupt variation for online application. This method is applied to multilevel inverter of both three and ve dc sources. Also additional switching is used to eliminate selected higher order harmonics along with lower order harmonics. The computed switching angles are stored as look-up table in the memory of DSP for online application. Also in the suggested method, the problem of discontinuity of the solution at certain points is avoided, which makes it more convenient for online application. The proposed scheme can be efciently employed for online