Design of a Current Mode PI Controller for

a Single-phase PWM Inverter

S. M. Cherati
1
, N. A. Azli
2
, S. M. Ayob and A. Mortezaei
Power Electronics and Drive Research Group (PEDG), Energy Research Alliance
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Malaysia
sam.mcherati@fkegraduate.utm.my
1

naziha@ieee.org
2



Abstract- This paper presents the design of current mode PI
controller for single-phase PWM inverter. The controller is
comprised of inductor current as the inner loop and output
voltage as the outer feedback loop. The control design is carried
out using Sisotool, which is provided in Matlab. By using this
tool, users can examine the effects of changing the gain control
values to systems transient response and stability,
simultaneously. Hence, simplify and speed up the control design
process. To evaluate the performance of the designed controller,
the inverter is simulated under several types of load disturbances.
From the result, it is shown that the designed controller exhibits a
good transient response i.e. fast rising and settling time with
small overshoot when subjected to step load disturbance.

I. INTRODUCTION

Power inverter is an important part of many DC to AC
conversion equipments such as uninterruptible power supply
(UPS), induction motor drive and automatic voltage regulator
(AVR) systems. In these systems, it is the major requirement
for the power inverter to be capable of producing and
maintaining a stable and clean sinusoidal output voltage
waveform regardless of the type of load connected to it. The
main key to successfully maintain this ability is to have a
feedback controller [1].
Currently, there are various control methods that have been
proposed for inverter. Among the prevalent methods are the
Voltage Mode Control (VMC) and Current Mode Control
(CMC). In VMC method, the control parameters design is
easy. The implementation can be considered as inexpensive
since it requires only one voltage sensor. However the main
drawback of VMC is that the system is prone to instability and
very sensitive to large input variations. Moreover, VCM also
does not control the current. Thus, power electronic switches
are vulnerable to over-current damage or overloads. To
achieve better performance, robustness and also immune to
input disturbance and current protection, current mode (CMC)
is more preferable. Unlike VMC, CMC has an additional
inner loop. Usually, the inductor current is used as the inner
loop. The inductor current is sensed and used to control the
duty cycle.
In this paper, accurate design of PI parameter is discussed
for voltage and current loop and their proper bandwidth and
phase margin are calculated. Both the transfer function and the
state-space models of the inverter are provided.

II. DYNAMIC MODEL OF SINGLE-PHASE INVERTER

Fig. 1, shows the equivalent circuit of a single-phase full
bridge inverter with connected load. In this study, control
based on the linear strategy theory is presented. Solid-state
switches and connected rectifier are nonlinearity source of a
system, so for proper control design, the system must be
linearized around its operating point. If the designed controller
is robust enough, the system can work around its operating
point with high performance which means a wide range of
bandwidth is required [2]. In this work, a nominal resistive
load of R = 1u is set as the operating point for linearization.

Fig. 1. Full bridge single-phase inverter

A. State-Space Model
The resistive load and its related filter operate as a
continuous time second-order system. The state variables of
the system are capacitor voltage (I
c
) and inductor current (i
L
).
The dynamic model of Fig. 1, can be represented by the
following equations.

_
i
L

I
c

_ = _
-

c
+R(
L
+
c
)
L(R+
c
)
-
R
L(R+
c
)
1
C(1+
c
R )
1
RC(1+
c
R )
_ _
i
L
I
c
] +_
1
L
u
_ I
u
(1)

I
o
= [

c
+R

R
R+
c
[

L
v
c
(2)

One of the important factors of load effect on the inverter is
output impedance which in this case as rectifier is a load with
nonlinear nature; the output voltage will be highly distorted.
For determining the output impedance, circuit laws can be
applied as shown in Fig. 2.
2011 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Colloquium (IAPEC)
978-1-4577-0008-8/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE 180

Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit of a single-phase inverter

I
o
(s) =

c
Cs+1
LCS
2
+C(
L
+
c
)s+1
I
u
-

c
LCS
2
+(L+
L

c
C)s+
L
LCS
2
+C(
L
+
c
)s+1
I
o
(3)

r
L
and r
c
are ignored in many modeling since they are
generally very small but in this paper only r
c
is disregarded
(r
c
=0 ). By using s = ] and determining Z as output
impedance in I
o
= ZI
o
,

Z = -
]L+
L
-LC
2
+]C
L
+1
(4)

It can be clearly seen in (4) that, by increasing the switching
frequency, the output impedance will be reduced. This means
that lower component values of the LC filter are required [3].

By ignoring the internal resistance of the filter capacitor (r
c
=
0), (1) and (2) can be simplified as (5) and (6).

_
i
L

I
c

_ = _
-

L
L
-
1
L
1
C
1
RC
_ _
i
L
I
c
] + _
1
L
u
_ I
u
(5)

I
o
= (u 1) [

L
v
c
(6)


B. Analysis of multiple feedback loop control
A DC motor has some similarity to an inverter in terms of
using cascade control (multi-loop control) [4]. In a DC motor
system, the armature current and stator voltage are used as
current and voltage feedback loop for achieving sufficient
steady-state and good transient performance. A single-phase
inverter has the same scenario. The inductor current of the
filter acts as an inner loop parameter while the output voltage
is the outer loop parameter. Fig. 3 illustrates the voltage and
current loop [5].


(a)

(b)
(c)
Fig. 3. Control schemes for a single-phase inverter. (a) Voltage feedback loop
control. (b) Current feedback loop control. (c) Outer voltage and inner current
feedback loop control

K
v
and K
I
of Fig. 3, represent voltage and current sensors
gain respectively. Fig. 3(c), shows the overall current mode
control structure. The variable K
PWM
is the PWM gain, which
is defined as
v
dc
v
Tri
. The controller for the loops can be either
PI, Sliding mode, Fuzzy, Deatbeat etc. [6]-[9]. For this work,
a conventional PI controller is used.


III. CONTROL SYSTEM DESIGN

The design of PI controller can be done using several
methods. It can be designed using Ziegler-Nicholas, Pole-
placement method and Frequency response [10]. However,
the latter method will be used to design the controller. For
simplicity, Sisotool from MATLAB/SIMULINK is used to
tune the controller and evaluate the suitability of bandwidth
and stability. As mentioned earlier, the control system is
designed for a linear load (R = 10 ) and tested on a nonlinear
load such as a rectifier. The simulation testing parameters are
as given in Table 1.

TABLE 1. SIMULATION TESTING PARAMETERS

I
dc
215 V
I
out
200 Vp-p
r
L
0.3
Filtcr InJuctor (I) 1.2 mH
Filtcr Copocitor (C) 13.2 F
Iincor IooJ(R) 10
Switcbing Frcqucncy 40 kHz
Currcnt scnsor goin (K

) 0.06
Ioltogc scnsor goin (K

) 0.01
Nonlincor IooJ (ioJc Rcctiicr)
R = 100
C = 500 F
Ioltogc Rccrcncc 1 V
181



























Fig. 4. The single-phase circuit with its control system


















Fig. S. The single-phase inveitei simulation mouel

PI contiolleis aie useu as the voltage anu cuiient
contiolleis. The PI contiollei tiansfei function is
iepiesenteu as:

K
p
+
K
i
s
= K
p

(s+K
i
K
p
)
s
(7)

For obtaining accurate value of K
p
and K

, the Sisotool in
MATLAB/SIMULINK can be used. Since the voltage loop
and current loop are decoupling, each PI controller can be
designed separately. In this work, the inner loop will be firstly
designed. The control bandwidth for the inner loop should be
larger than the outer loop, since the inductor current has faster
response compared to the output voltage. Since the switching
frequency is 40 kHz, the control bandwidth for the current
loop should be within 4 kHz. The bandwith for the voltage
loop is set to be within 400 Hz. Both loops should be
designed with phase margins of within 65
o
.

The PI controller for the current loop can be designed by
using the transfer function between the inductor current and
the current reference. Based on Fig. 3(b), the transfer function
of
I
L
I
rc]
can be obtained as follows:

I
L
I
rc]
= K
pwm
(RCs+1)
RLCs
2
+(CR
L
+L)s+(R+
L
)
(8)

K
pwm
=
v
dc
v
tri
(9)

The complete transfer function by incorporating the PI
controller can be expressed as in (10).

I
L
I
rc]
= K
p

(s+K
i
K
p
)
s

v
dc
v
tri

(RCs+1)
RLCs
2
+(CR
L
+L)s+(R+
L
)
(10)

From (10), it can be shown that the controller adds a zero at
the left side of s-plan and zero at the origin to compensate the
second-order transfer function. Fig. 6 shows the resulting
bode-plot of the closed-loop current mode.



Fig.6. Bode plot of current loop system
182

From Fig. 6, the bandwidth of the current loop is S.62
1u
3
Ez while the phase margin is 6S
o
, which are acceptable
values. To design the outer loop controller, it is assumed that
the inner loop is unity as illustrated in Fig. 7. Equation (11)
expresses the complete transfer function of Fig. 7 with PI
controller.


v
c
vc]
= K
p

(s+K
i
K
p
)
s

R
RCs+1
(11)

It should be noted that the outer loop should have a bandwith
of 400 Hz. Fig. 8 shows the resulting bode plot and root locus
of the voltage loop.


Fig. 7. Voltage loop block diagram with the designed current loop.



Fig.8. Bode plot and root locus of the voltage loop

It can be clearly seen that, the bandwidth is lower than the
inner loop (942 Hz) while its phase margin is 63
o
.

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

The control system has been designed for a linear load (R
= 10 ). The following figures (Fig. 9 and Fig. 10) illustrate
the voltage and current waveforms of the load when the
system becomes no-load at t = 0.004.


Fig. 9. Output voltage


Fig. 10. Load current


V. CONCLUSION

In this paper a current mode PI controller for a single-
phase PWM inverter has been designed. The control structure
is comprised of two loops and has been arranged in a cascaded
fashion. Two systems variables namely the inductor current
and the output voltage are sensed as the feedback variables.
The Sisotool from MATLAB/SIMULINK has been used to
tune and design the PI control parameters for both loops. The
performance is verified by subjecting the inverter system with
different types of load. The simulation results have shown
that the controller is capable of producing good output voltage
regulation.





0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02
-100
-50
0
50
100
Time Second
V
o
l
t
a
g
e

(
V
o
l
t
)
Output Voltage


0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02
-15
-10
-5
0
5
10
15
Time (second)
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

(
A
m
p
)
Load Current
183


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th
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