Investigation of switching loss reduction for the matrix converter based on virtual AC/DC/AC conversion using space vector modulation

This paper proposes a space vector modulation based on the virtual AC/DC/AC conversion method for a matrix converter to reduce the switching loss. The switching loss of the matrix converter is not decided by only the number of switching times but also depending on the voltage and current in the selected switching devices based on the modulation. The proposed method can minimize the maximum instantaneous switching loss which is caused by the selection of switching state with the absolute maximum values in the input voltages and the output currents. This can be achieved by changing over the zero-vectors of virtual inverter in the proposed method. In this paper, the loss characteristics of the matrix converter using the proposed method are demonstrated experimentally. From the experimental result, it was confirmed that the proposed method can reduce the losses by 23.9 % in comparison with a conventional space vector modulation method.