A Contemporary Design Process for Single-Phase Voltage Source Inverter Control Systems

This paper presents an overview of contemporary voltage source inverter control system design. Design begins with the theoretical considerations that lead to the creation of the system’s differential control law. This stage does not include scaling coefficients for the output voltage, output current, and filter inductor current. Following this, the inverter is modelled in MATLAB’s Simulink environment with an appropriate load and control system. If the resultant simulation provides satisfactory results, a hybrid system consisting of MATLAB’s Simulink and dSpace libraries with the MicroLabBox device is used to interface the simulation with an experimental hardware model in real-time. This allows the hardware plant and measuring traces to be validated. ControlDesk is used to scale the relevant coefficients. During the final stage of the design process, a microprocessor is programmed to control the inverter according to the dSpace simulation results. This requires new scaling values. Throughout every stage of the design process, too high a value of the modulation index disables the reduction of output voltage distortions. This paper details the entire design process for both single-input and multi-input control systems, explaining the scaling process and the required software. Such a modern design process ensures the shortest time between conceptualization and the final product.