International Journal of Power Electronics and Drive System (IJPEDS)

Vol. 6, No. 1, March 2015, pp. 1~9

ISSN: 2088-8694 1

Modified Single Stage AC-AC Converter

Derick Mathew, Athira P Ashok, Bincy Mathew

Departement of Electrical Engineering, Karunya University, Tamil Nadu, India

Article Info ABSTRACT

Article history: The paper describes the single stage AC-AC converter. This converter is a
good alternative to quasi direct back to back converter. This single stage
Received Jun 27, 2014 converter is called Matrix Converter. Matrix converter is an array of
Revised Oct 22, 2014 controlled semiconductor switches that connects three phase source to the
Accepted Nov 10, 2014 three phase load. This converter provides bidirectional power flow,
sinusoidal input and output waveforms and they have no dc link storage
elements. Simulation model and results presented showing Venturini control
Keyword: method of matrix converter.
Back to back converter
Bidirectional power flow
Matrix converter
Storage elements
Venturini control method Copyright 2015 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science.
All rights reserved.

Corresponding Author:
Derick Mathew,
Departement of Electrical Engineering,
Karunya University,
Karunya Nagar, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu 641114, India.
Email: derickmathew1@gmail.com

1. INTRODUCTION
The transformation and control of energy is one of the most important processes in electrical
engineering. In recent years, this work has been done with the use of power semiconductors and energy
storage elements such as capacitors and inductances. Several converter families have been developed:
rectifiers, inverters, choppers, cycloconverters, etc. Each of these families has its own advantages and
limitations. The main advantage of all static converters over other energy processors is the high efficiency
that can be achieved. One of the most interesting families of converters is that of the so-called matrix
converters (MCs). It is hoped that the AC-AC matrix converter topology will replace the work of standard
AC-DC-AC converters since standard converters are bulky and costly. This converter topology will play a
large role in the application of an industrial AC drives and wind energy power generation. This topology can
for instance be used in the following areas: in wind energy power generation, in an industrial AC motor
drives, in a marine application, in a military application especially for military vehicles, in an aerospace
application.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
The first study of direct AC/AC frequency converters was presented in 1976 by [1]. In a general
sense, an AC/AC power frequency conversion is the processes of transforming AC power of one frequency
to AC power of another frequency. In addition to the capability of providing continuous control of the output
frequency relative to the input frequency the power frequency converter provide a continuous control of the
amplitude of the output voltage. Theseconverters have inherent bidirectional power flow capability. Static
power frequency converters can be divided in to two main categories. The first type is a two stage power
converter with an intermediate DC link called indirect AC/DC/AC power frequency converter. The second

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type is called a direct AC/AC power frequency converter. This latter type is a one stage power converter
which consists basically of an array of semiconductor switches connected directly between the input and
output terminals.

2.1. Indirect AC/DC/AC Power Converter

The most traditional topology for AC/AC power converter is a diode rectifier based pulse width
modulated voltage source inverter (PWM-VSI) which is shown in Figure 1. This consists of two power
stages and an intermediate energy storage element. In the first stage the AC power is converted to
uncontrolled DC power by the means of a diode rectifier circuit. The converted DC power is then stored in
DC link capacitor. In the second stage a high frequency switching operated PWM-VSI generates AC signals
with arbitrary amplitude and frequency [2].

Figure 1. Diode rectifier-PWM VSI converter

2.2. Direct AC/AC Converter

The direct AC/AC converter provides a direct connection between the input and output terminals
without an intermediate energy storage element through an array of semiconductor switches as shown in
Figure 2.

Figure 2. Direct AC/AC converter

The main features of matrix converter are the following [3]:

a) Sinusoidal input current and sinusoidal output voltage.
b) It employs bidirectional switches, which enables regenerating energy back to the source.
c) It ables to adjust the input power factor of the converter despite the type of the load connected. Unity
power factor is easily achievable.
d) There is no intermediary DC-link energy storage. Since the converter is DC-link less, the size and cost of
the converter is relatively reduced. In addition, the power at the input is seen at the output.
e) It has found utility in high temperature, high vibration and low volume/weight applications such as
aerospace.

3. MATRIX CONVERTER
The study of the matrix converter has been going on for the last 25 years. The progress in the
development of power device (silicon) technology and large power integrated circuits encouraged the interest
of research to explore an AC-AC matrix converter as an elegant silicon-intensive and efficient way to convert
electric power for the following: AC motor drives, uninterruptible power supplies, variable frequency
generators, and reactive energy controls. However, the power converter is still not utilized in industry
because of the difficulties involved in the practical implementation related to bidirectional switch realization,

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PWM control method, the synchronization and the protection problems [3]. This section describes a
mathematical tools and models which are used to analyse the different control methods commonly employed
for matrix converter implementation.

3.1. Working Principle

In general, the matrix converter is a single-stage converter with mn bidirectional power switches,
designed to connect an m-phase voltage source to an n-phase load. The matrix converter of 33 switches,
shown in Figure.3, is the most important converter from a practical point of view, because it connects a three-
phase source to a three phase load. In the basic topology of the MC shown in Figure 3, Vi,i={a,b,c} are the
source voltages, i ={a,b,c}, are the source currents, Vjn, j ={A,B,C}, are the load voltages with respect to
the neutral point of the load n, and ij , j={A,B,C} are the load currents. Additionally, other auxiliary variables
have been defined to be used as a basis of the modulation and control strategies and VjN, j = {A,B,C} are the
load voltages with respect to the neutral point N of the source.
Each switch Sji, i ={a,b,c}, j ={A,B,C}, can connect or disconnect phase I of the input stage to phase
j of the load and, the proper combination of the conduction states of these switches, arbitrary output voltages
VjN czn be syntheized. Each switch is characterized by a switching function called existence function,
proposed by Wood [4] , provides a mathematical expression for describing switching patterns, defined as
follows:

0 if switch S is open
Sji(t) = (1)
1 if swich S is closed

Figure 3. Basic Power Circuit of the Matrix Converter

3.2. Mathematical Model of Matrix Converter

A simplified three-phase matrix converter model is shown in Figure 2 and consists of 9 ideal
bidirectional switches which allows each of the three output lines to be connected to any of the three input
lines. The three converter inputs are connected to a 3-phase system, Va, Vb, Vc. The output lines are
connected to a three-phase current source, iA, iB and iC, which acts as the load.
Input voltages and output currents are given by Equation (2) and (3), respectively.

cos t
Va
Viph Vb Vin cos t (2)
Vc cos t

cos t
iA
Ioph iB i cos t (3)
iC cos t

Where Va, Vband Vcare three-phase input sinusoidal voltages and Vinis the peak value of the input voltages.
Assuming that the output voltage waveforms are sinusoidal and assuming a linear load, the output currents
iA, iBand iC are also sinusoidal. ioutis the peak value of the output currents and is the phase between
output voltages and currents and are the input and output angular frequencies respectively. The column
Modified Single Stage AC AC Converter (Derick Mathew)
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matrices Viphand iophprovide a compact mathematical form of expressing the input voltages and output
currents, respectively.

4. VENTURINI METHOD
The Matrix Converter control strategies were first mentioned by Alesina [1] and Venturini [5].
Various modulation techniques can be applied to the AC-AC matrix Converter to achieve sinusoidal output
voltages and input currents. An optimal modulation strategy should minimize the input current and the output
voltage harmonic distortion and device power loss. The first modulator proposed for Matrix Converters,
Known as the Venturini modulation, employed a scalar model [6]. This model gives a maximum voltage
transfer ratio of 0.5. The concept of switching functions is used to derive a mathematical model of the Matrix
Converter which is done in the previous chapter.
In this analysis, a three-phase input, three-phase output converter is considered. Because the Matrix
Converter is symmetrical, the designation of input and output ports is arbitrary. However, for any sensible
mode of operation, one port should be considered to have a voltage stiff characteristic and the other port a
current stiff characteristic. In this case stiff means that the voltage or current must be constant with no
interruptions or sudden variations. For the following analysis it is assumed that the input port is voltage stiff
and the output port is current stiff. In a practical Matrix Converter an input filter is included to circulate the
high frequency switching harmonics and provide the voltage stiff characteristic. The output inductance is
usually part of the load giving a current stiff characteristic. This study considers that upper case suffixes
always denote the output phases and lower case suffixes denote the input phases as shown in Figure 3.
If conventional PWM is employed the switching sequence Tshas a fixed period.A modulation duty
cycle should be defined for each switch in order to determine the average behaviour of the Matrix Converter
output voltage waveform. The modulation duty cycle is defined by:

(4)

Where tA are presents the time when switch Aa is ON and Ts represents the time of the complete sequence in
the PWM pattern. The modulation strategies are defined by using these continuous time functions. Equation
(4) shows the use of these functions for the three-phase Matrix Converter.

(5)

(6)

Voltages VA, VB &VCand currents ia, ib&icin (5) and (6) are now values averaged over the sampling time
Ts. In (7) and (8), which is a representation in a more compact notation of (5) and (6), the matrix M(t) is
known as the modulation matrix.

(7)

(8)

In this section, the basic Venturini modulation strategy for matrix converter will be
presented.Modulation is the procedure used to generate the appropriate firing pulses to each of the nine
bidirectional switches (Sji) in order to generate the desired output voltage. In this case, the primary objective
of the modulation is to generate variable-frequency and variable-amplitude sinusoidal output voltages (VjN)
from the fixed-frequency and fixed-amplitude input voltages (Vi). The easiest way of doing this is to
consider time windows in which the instantaneous values of the desired output voltages are sampled and the
instantaneous input voltages are used to synthesize a signal whose low frequency component is the desired
output voltage. If tji is defined as the time during which switch sjiis on and Tsas the sampling interval, the
synthesis principle described above can be expressed as:

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j= {A, B, C} (9)

Obviously, Ts = tja + tjb + tjc j and therefore duty cycles can be defined as:

, , (10)

Input Voltage and output currents are sinusoidal and can expressed as:

cos t
Va
Viph Vb Vim cos t (11)
Vc cos t

cos t
iA
ioph iB i cos t (12)
iC cos t

Suppose that the desired output voltage and input current vectors is given by:

cos t
VA
Voph VB qVim cos t (13)
VC cos t

cos t
ia
iiph ib i cos t (14)
ic cos t

And that the following active power balance equation must be satisfied with:

The explicit form of matrix M (t) can be obtained from (Alberto et al. 1981)and it can be reduced to the
following expression [7]:

1 2 (15)
Where i= {a, b, c} and j= {A, B, C}

Note that, because of the averaging working principle, the output voltage low frequency component
cannot exceed the maximum available amplitudes for all instants. The reference can attain its maximum at an
arbitrary time, therefore the worst-case maximum available amplitudes are equal to 0.5Vi as in Figure 4 and,
therefore, the voltage gain of the matrix converter is restricted to be less than 0.5. It must be clarified,
however, that this limit is small since the modulation under consideration uses the phase-to-neutral voltages
to synthesize the output voltages, i.e. this is a limitation arising from the modulation used, not from the
matrix converter [7].

Figure 4. Output voltages, Vo = 0.5 Vi

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5. SIMULATION MODEL AND RESULTS

In order to verify the effectiveness of this power supply and the output voltage control strategy
proposed, the Matrix Converter system is simulated considering practical values for the electronic component
and load conditions. The system has main technical specifications as follow [8]:
a) Rated input voltage: Three-phase 415V (rms, line voltage), 50Hz mains supply.
b) Rated output power: The Matrix Converter system is designed for a total power of 3kVA.
c) Rated output voltage: Three-phase 117V (rms, phase voltage).
The total output power is 7.5kVA. The power per phase is calculated as:

1000 (16)

An equivalent load impedance can be obtained as:

(17)
13.689

Considering a value of 0.8 for the power factor (pf),

Pf 0.8 cos acos 0.8 36.87 (18)

| | (19)

| | cos 10.95 (20)

Xl | | sin 8.2 (21)

2 300 (22)

8.7 (23)

The final values for the equivalent phase resistive-inductive load, considering a pf =0.8, are:

R = 10
L = 8.7mH

5.1. Simulation Model

Details of Basic Venturini control Method was explained in detailed in section VI. This model
designed and simulated using the Matlab - Simulink package to demonstrate the basic principle of the matrix
converter. Equaation (15) is used to obtain the elements of the low-frequency transfer matrix M (t) and times
tji. Figure 5 shows the general structure of the module that generates the components mjiof matrix M(t),
taking as inputs the current samples of the MC input voltages (Vi) and of the desired output voltages.

(VjN= Vjref)

The most important part of the simulation is the generation of the switching functions of the
bidirectional switches (Sji(t)). These functions correspond to the gate drive signals of the power switches in
the real converter. Figure 6 presents the block diagram used to generate these functions in the case of the jth
output phase.
If we consider the variables and waveforms shown in Figure7 the "Introduction" chapter can
ultimately result in "Results and Discussion" chapter, so there is compatibility. Moreover, it can also be
added the prospect of the development of research results and application prospects of further studies into the
next (based on result and discussion).
Frequencyfs=2 kHz ie sampling time Ts=0.5ms and conduction times tja = 0.23 ms, tjb = 0.1ms
and tjc= 0.17ms.

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Figure 5. Generation of duty cycle mji in Matlab Simulink software package

Figure 6. Pulse generation scheme for one output phase

The ramp function starting from zero with slope 1 at the beginning of each sampling interval. This
ramp signal is compared with times tjaand tja+tjb, using comparators Comp A and Comp B respectively. The
output of comparator Comp A is the required switching function Sja, which corresponds to a pulse of
amplitude 1 with a duration equal to tja. The following logic decision is used to generate switching functions
for Sjb, Sjc. .

B (23)

5.2. Results
Some studies have been done using the following parameters: source voltage amplitude 230V, 50
Hz, load resistance R =10, load inductance L=8mH, voltage gain q=0.45, output frequency f0=50Hz this
means that the reference has an amplitude equal to 0.45230=103.5V and a frequency of 50Hz, switching
frequency fs=1/Ts=2kHz. For the resolution of the equations a five-order fixed-step solver, included in
Matlab_Simulink (ODE5 (Dormand-Price)), has been used. Figure 8 shows the output voltage VAN and
Figure 9 shows the load current iAfor the above conditions. The working principle of the MC is clearly
demonstrated. The low-pass characteristic of the load produces an almost sinusoidal current ia. In addition, it
can be observed that the MC can generate output frequencies that are not restricted by the source
frequency,which typically is the case in phase-controlled cycloconverters.

Figure 7. Variables used for the pulse generator of one output phase

Modified Single Stage AC AC Converter (Derick Mathew)

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Figure 8. Output Voltage VAN, its reference (bold Figure 9. Output current iA
line)

Figure 10. Output frequency changes as the reference frequency changes

It is important to note that the proposed simulation strategy Figure 10 shows the output phase
voltage in the same conditions of Figure 8, but considering a voltage gain of q=0.9 and an output frequency
of f0=20Hz. Note that the voltage gain is greater than the maximum allowable (q=0.5) and therefore the low-
frequency component of the generated voltage is heavily distorted. There are intervals in which the input
voltage level is not enough to synthesize the desired output voltage.

6. CONCLUSION
The paper presents Venturini modulation techniques for three phase-to-three phase matrix converter.
In this technique we will assume the desired output voltage and from that we will derive the modulation
matrix from this we will find the duty ratio of each switches, so will get the sinusoidal input current and
output voltage. The feasibility and validity of the method were verified by MATLAB simulation. It can be
conclude that this method is ac to ac conversion in matrix converter.

REFERENCES
[1] Alberto Alesina, Marco GB Venturini, Solid-state conversion: A fourier analysis approach to generalized
transformer synthesis, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and System, 1981; 28(4): 319.
[2] Abdelmalek, et al, Direct Power Control for AC/DC/AC Converters in Doubley fed induction generator based wind
Turbine, IJECE, 2012; 2(3): 425-432.
[3] Gebregergis, et al., A three phase AC/AC matrix converter system, Thesis Stellenbosch University.
[4] Wood P. Switching Power Converter, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, Newyork, N.Y.10020, 1981.
[5] Venturini M. A New sine wave out, conversion technique which eliminates reactive elements, Proceeding Powercon
7, 1980; E3: 1.
[6] Alberto Alesina et al., Analysis and design of optimum amplitude nine switch direct AC-AC converter, IEEE
Transactions on Power Electronics, 1989; 4(1): 101.
[7] Rodriguez j et al. Matrix converter controlled with the direct transfer function approach: Analysis, modelling, and
simulation, International journal of electronics, 2005.
[8] Saul Lopez Arevalo. Matrix converter for frequency changing power supply applications, University of Nottingham.

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BIOGRAPHIES OF AUTHORS

Mr. Derick Mathew received Bachelors degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from
Kannur University in 2011 and is now pursuing his Masters degree in Power Electronics and
Drives at Karunya University.

Ms. Athira P Ashok received the Bachelors degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering
from MG University in 2012 and is now pursuing her Masters degree in Power Electronics and
Drives at Karunya University.

Ms. Bincy M Mathewwas born in Kerala. She received the B.Tech Degree in Electrical and
Electronics Engineering from Mar BaseliosCollege,Kerala University in 2012 and now pursuing
M.Tech in Power Electronics and Drives from Karunya University.

Modified Single Stage AC AC Converter (Derick Mathew)