2014 First International Conference on Computational Systems and Communications (ICCSC) | 17-18 December 2014 | Trivandrum

Boost Converter based Power Factor Correction for

Single Phase Rectifier using Fuzzy Logic Control
Arya Krishna S..

Lizy Abraham

Dept of ECE
LBSITW, Poojappura, Trivandrum, India

Dept of ECE
LBSITW, Poojappura, Trivandrum, India

aryakrishna.s@gmail.com
Abstract Power Factor which is the ratio between the real
or actual power and the apparent power is a very essential
parameter in power system. It indicates how effectively the real
power of the system has been utilized. In any electrical power
system, a load with a low power factor draws more current than
a high power factor load, for the same amount of useful power
transferred. The most popular topology in Power Factor
Correction (PFC) applications is certainly the boost topology.
The boost topology is very simple and allows low-distorted input
currents and almost unity power factor with different control
techniques. A new fuzzy logic control strategy in a boost
converter based PFC method for single phase rectifier is
presented in this work. The proposed fuzzy logic control system
has two inputs and one output. The proposed PFC control is
based on boost converter operating at continuous conduction
mode and provides a higher switching frequency.
Keywords-Power Factor, Boost Converter, Power Factor
Correction, Total Harmonic Distortion, Fuzzy Control.

I.

INTRODUCTION

The attention devoted to the quality of the currents

absorbed from the utility line by electronic equipment is
increasing due to various reasons. In fact, a low power factor
reduces the power available from the grid, while a high
harmonic distortion of the line current causes EMI problems
and cross-interferences. It is seen that the standard rectifier
including a diode bridge and a filter capacitor gives
unacceptable performances in most of the cases.
Most commonly encountered loads are inductive (linear
loads) in nature and hence draw lagging current resulting in
reduced values of power factor. Non-linear loads distort the
supply current waveform and hence results in a power factor
much less than unity. Hence it is necessary to use suitable
power factor correction techniques to counteract the distortion
and to improve the power factor. High-frequency active PFC
circuit are usually preferred for power factor correction. Any
DC-DC converters can be used for this purpose, if a suitable
control method is used to shape its input current or if it has
appropriate PFC properties. Conventionally, boost converters
are used as active power factor correctors.
The DC-DC converters basically have two operating
modes- Continuous Inductor Current Mode (CICM) and
Discontinuous Inductor Current Mode (DICM). In the CICM
operating mode, the inductor current never becomes zero
during a single switching cycle where as in DICM, the inductor

lizywithlove@gmail.com
current will become zero during different intervals of the
switching cycle.
The current control techniques for PFC converters,
especially in CICM mode, have gained importance in AC to
DC converters which are used for high performance
applications where fast response and high accuracy are
important. Various current control methods exist, including
hysteresis control, linear control, average current mode control
and predictive control. In any current control method the
inductor current signal is first converted to its voltage analog
signal which is used in a feedback loop where it is compared to
the control voltage. This output is used to generate PWM
signal.
Hysteresis current control [2] is an instantaneous feedback
control system. It uses the current error and when it exceeds the
limit of the band, the switches will be turned on/off. This
technique is simple, accurate and robust and the speed of the
response is limited by time constant of the load and switching
speed of the device. However, the variable switching frequency
operation is a disadvantage.
The error measurements between the actual currents as
compared to the references are processed by conventional
proportional-integral controller which provides a reference
control signal for a PWM modulator, in a linear control scheme
[3]. The converter switches will be controlled by the constantfrequency pulse width-modulated gate signals provided at the
PWM modulator output. Using standard integrated circuits,
relatively straightforward implementation of linear controller
can be achieved.
In the average current control method [4] the PWM
modulator is driven by the current error amplifier output which
tends to minimize the error between average current input and
the reference current. A comparison between Hysteresis current
control method and average current control method was done
in [6] and the results were analysed and simulated using PSIM
software.
In the predictive control method [5], at the beginning of
each modulation period, the current-error-vector is predicted
based on the error and the load variables. The predicted voltage
vector is used to control the PWM pulse generator during the
next modulation cycle and thus minimizes the error. The
predictive regulators are suitable for digital implementation and
can assure effective control of the converter operation and
performance improvement.

978-1-4799-6013-2/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE.

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2014 First International Conference on Computational Systems and Communications (ICCSC) | 17-18 December 2014 | Trivandrum

In this paper, a fuzzy logic based control method is

implemented for a parallel boost converter circuit which
provides appropriate power factor correction by reducing the
total harmonic distortion. Reduction in total harmonic
distortion will lead to significant improvement in distortion
power factor value, thus increasing the overall power factor.
The fuzzy logic controller is a reliable method for current
control in boost converters and is easy to implement.
II.

PROPOSED METHOD

The key attribute of this method is the new fuzzy controller

which is used to control the duty cycle of the gate pulse
switching in a single phase rectified boost converter. Such a
control can regulate the switching in a way that improves the
power factor.
A. Boost Converter
A simple boost converter topology is shown in figure 1.
This circuit is used when a higher output voltage than input is
required. The output voltage is controlled by varying the
switching duty cycle of a high speed switch. When the switch
is on, current flows from the input source through inductor and
the switch, and energy is stored in the inductors magnetic
field. No current flow occurs through the diode and the load
current is supplied by the charge present across the capacitor.
When the switch is off, any drop in current is opposed by the
inductor by immediately reversing its EMF, so that the inductor
voltage adds to (i.e., boosts.) the source voltage, and now the
current due to this boosted voltage reaches the load through the
inductor and diode path and will be recharging the capacitor as
well. Hence the converter output will be higher than the input
voltage.
The Simulink model for the boost converter is shown in
figure 2. An IGBT switch is used here and the gate pulse
switching is controlled using a fuzzy logic controller.

B. Fuzzy Controller
A fuzzy logic controller is based on a set of rules, which
decides the final control action. Each rule gives information
about the control action to be taken in response to a given set of
conditions. The block diagram of a basic fuzzy controller
system is shown in figure 3. The process of converting the
input parameters to a form suitable for processing using fuzzy
logic is fuzzification. It is easy to understand and easy to
maintain a rule base controller. Using appropriate fuzzy rules
as database, decision making is done. Finally the reverse
process of fuzzification called defuzzification is done to get the
required output control parameter. In this system a two input
one output based fuzzy logic controller is designed.
The designed fuzzy logic controller is used to regulate the
gate pulses of boost converter as shown in figure 4. The circuit
consists of a single phase rectifier, boost converter, PWM and
Fuzzy Logic controller. The input source is the DC input from
single phase rectifier. The boost converter output is controlled
by Fuzzy Logic controller kept in the feedback path to control
duty cycle of the switch for shaping the input current
waveform.
Inductor current plays an important role in the response of
the boost converter. It also provides the energy storage
information in the converter. Thus, any change in inductor may
effect output voltage.

Fuzzy Rule
Database

Input

Decision
Making

Fuzzification

Defuzzification

Output

Fig 3: Typical Fuzzy Logic Controller Block Diagram

DC from
rectifier
Vref
Fig 1: Simple boost converter.

Fuzzy
Logic

PWM

Boost
Converter

DC output

Fig 4: Block diagram of Fuzzy controlled Boost converter

Fig 2: Boost converter circuit in Simulink

Fig 5: Fuzzy controller block in Simulink

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2014 First International Conference on Computational Systems and Communications (ICCSC) | 17-18 December 2014 | Trivandrum

The fuzzy controller has two inputs, error voltage (e) and
change in error voltage (e). Error voltage is the difference
between output voltage (Vout) and reference voltage (Vref). The
change in error voltage is the difference between error voltage
and previous voltage. Equations for error voltage and change in
error voltage are given below.
e = Vref -Vout

(1)

e = e(k) - e(k-1)

(2)

Fig 10: Look-up table for fuzzy rule set

C. Membership Function
The fuzzy logic controller uses two input voltage
membership function and one output voltage membership
function configured using FIS editor available in MATLAB
fuzzy logic toolbox. FIS editor and input and output
membership functions are shown in the following figures.

Fig 11: Rule viewer

Fig 6: FIS Editor

Fig 7: Input error Membership Function (e)

Fig 12: Surface viewer

III. RESULT ANALYSIS

Fig 8: Change in error input Membership Function (e)

Fig 9: Output dutycycle Membership Function

D. Fuzzy Rules
The fuzzy rules are designed based on the knowledge about
system working. Based on the changes in the input of fuzzy
logic controller, the rule base adjusts the PWM duty cycle. The
look-up table for the designed rule set is given in figure 10.
Corresponding rule viewer and surface viewer are shown in
figure 11 and 12 respectively.

The proposed fuzzy control algorithm has been applied to

control the switching of gate pulses in boost converter circuit
for power factor correction. The results were compared with a
hysteresis control method which controls the switching signals
of the inverter power switches in a manner that reduces the
current error. The input current waveforms and corresponding
harmonic distortions obtained from FFT analysis, for a single
phase rectifier without PFC, a rectifier with hysteresis current
controller based PFC and a rectifier with a fuzzy controller
based PFC are shown in figures 13-18.The total harmonic
distortion (THD) over 10 input cycles and power factor
obtained in different cases are tabulated in Table I.
TABLE I: PERFORMANCE COMPARISON
Methods

THD (%)

Power Factor

Without PFC

128.26

0.61487

Hysteresis controller based PFC

36.44

0.93956

Fuzzy controller based PFC

0.42

0.99999

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2014 First International Conference on Computational Systems and Communications (ICCSC) | 17-18 December 2014 | Trivandrum

Fig 13: Input Current for Rectifier without PFC

Fig 14: Input Current for Rectifier with Hysteresis controller based PFC

Fig 18: FFT analysis of input current wave for Rectifier with Fuzzy controller
based PFC

IV. CONCLUSION

Fig 15: Input Current for Rectifier with Fuzzy controller based PFC

A novel method for boost converter based power factor

correction in a single phase rectifier using fuzzy controller has
been proposed in this paper and the results were evaluated in
Simulink. The experiments have shown that the method
produced good results, by reducing the total harmonic
distortion and thus yielding a power factor near to unity.
Moreover, the use of fuzzy logic control has good potential to
cope with overshoot limitations and large parameter variations
of the system. The total harmonic distortion in each of the
cases were analysed for 10 input current cycles and the PFC
system involving fuzzy controller shows only 0.42% THD.
The control strategy is effective in producing sinusoidal
current waveform with minimum harmonic distortion.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank all the staff members of the
Department of Electronics and Communication, LBSITW,
Poojappura for their support, guidance and encouragement.
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Fig 17: FFT analysis of input current wave for Rectifier with Hysteresis
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