A novel PSIM and Matlab co-simulation approach to particle swarm optimization tuning of PID controllers

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) has proven to be a particularly popular evolutionary algorithm for the tuning of PID controllers, due to its relative simplicity and suitability as a function approximator. This paper presents a new modeling technique, featuring co-simulation between Matlab and PSIM, a specialist control and power electronics simulation environment. The tuned PID is applied to a buck converter, driven by a PV cell. The novel solution is compared with and evaluated against a system which is tuned using a traditional method. The simulation results indicate that the controller developed using the PSO algorithm achieves a faster response time without adversely affecting peak errors. There are added benefits of this new approach, in terms of a shorter time scale for conceptual model development.