Hybrid control of a three-cell converter associated to an inductive load

This paper presents a control scheme for a multilevel multi-cell converter. For this type of converters, load current and capacitor voltages must be jointly controlled. Moreover the real-time constraint is important. This constraint leads us to propose a control based on a simplified state-space model. The model allows predicting the state vector evolution for every converter configuration. The control algorithm directly determines the converter switching state which minimizes a simple cost function. A normalization of the state variables is proposed for the cost function calculation in order to ensure a trade-off between the tracking of the load current and the tracking of the capacitor voltages. The proposed control scheme is detailed and compared with a classical control scheme with simulations. Finally, experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.