A new control approach for unity power factor multilevel rectifiers

In recent years, research and development of multilevel converters for high power applications have attracted more attention due to the increased energy awareness in the global. Various topologies and PWM modulation approaches have been reported, however most control methods require fast and real-time calculation; therefore, a high-speed digital microprocessor and high performance A/D converters are necessary, yielding high complexity, high cost, and low reliability. The theory and experiments reported in Manjrekar, M et al. (1998) have demonstrated that one-cycle control is a unified PWM control method in power electronics field. Functioning as an analog computer, it can control all basic power converters at low cost, simply circuitry and high reliability (Bum-Seok Suh et al. (1998), Manjrekar, M et al., (1998), Manjrekar, MD et al. (2000), K. Ma Smedley (1991), Zheren Lai, et al. (1998)). In this paper a new control approach based on one-cycle control is reported to control a single-phase rectifier, theory and simulation have proved that the new control approach is a high performance and low cost solution for a multilevel single-phase rectifier.