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Published in IET Control Theory and Applications
Received on 17th November 2011
Revised on 25th February 2013
Accepted on 17th March 2013
doi: 10.1049/iet-cta.2013.0015

ISSN 1751-8644

Robust switched current control of converters

Ilse Cervantes1 , Angelica Mendoza-Torres1 , Ali Emadi2 , Irwin A. Diaz-Diaz1
1 Hybrid

Systems Laboratory, Applied Mathematics Division, IPICyT, Camino a la Presa San Jos 2055 Col. Lomas 4ta
78216 San Luis Potos, S. L. P., Mxico
2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4K1, Canada
E-mail: ilse@ipicyt.edu.mx; www.ipicyt.edu.mx

Abstract: In this study, a robust current switching control of converters is proposed. It is proved that the controller is able
to guarantee global current regulation, as well as the maximum voltage and current ripple, simultaneously. Such features
make it ideal for implementing power-management strategies and to be used along fuel cells. The control scheme is shown
to be robust against model uncertainty and since it is based on the piece-continuous model instead of average models, it is
suitable for operation under a wide range of conditions. Moreover, its complexity does not increase with the number of cells.
Experimental evidence of the advantages and features of the proposed control is presented in a two-cell boost converter.

Introduction

Hybridisation of traction schemes constitutes a suitable

option for increasing autonomy of electric vehicles. The goal
of hybrid power-management is to control the power ow
in order to satisfy an improved performance behaviour of
the system. Usually hybrid powertrains are constituted of
batteries, super-capacitors and/or fuel cells.
As remarked in [1], the voltage generated by a fuel cell
stack varies widely and is low-magnitude (<60 V for a 5
10 kW system and <350 V for a 300 kW system), thus a
step up dcdc conversion stage is essential for generating
a higher-regulated dc voltage (400 V typical for 120/240 V
ac output). In the past, a variety of power converter topologies and control methods has been proposed to deal with
hybrid electric powertrains. Among them, probably, multicell serial and parallel (interleaved) topologies are very
popular in vehicular applications because of their capacity of
having high-conversion ratios and increasing output current
while reduced input current ripple.
However, a main drawback of these converters is the difculty to ensure equilibrated current (power) sharing among
the cells in presence of disturbances and other perturbations. It has been reported that when two modules with
different characteristics and independent control are parallel
connected, one of these converters may operate in continuous mode and the other in discontinuous mode, depending
on the duty cycle [2]. Moreover, as the number of operation
combinations in a serial or parallel conguration increase
with the number of cells, the choice of this congurations
become complex and/or involved.
There exist studies in literature concerning operation and
current sharing in these topologies (see [35]). Hysteresis
current control in a pair of boost converters with coupled
inductors has been proposed in [6]. There also exist modern

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control strategies such as sliding mode or digital-based control techniques, among others ([7, 8]) that are concerned with
current sharing and voltage ripple, simultaneously. Such
controllers have shown good performance but their main
drawback is that the design procedure is complex, and such
complexity usually increases with the number of cells.
On the other hand, traditional control schemes have been
focused only on the problem of voltage tracking. The most
commonly used control methods are direct duty control [9]
and voltage (or current) programming control [10, 11].
Both strategies are based on averaged models and under
the assumption that high frequency switching leads to
continuous-time controllers. Under the same assumption,
non-linear control-schemes have also been proposed, such
as sliding mode control (SMC) [12], fuzzy logic [13], linear quadratic regulators (LQRs) [14, 15] and feed-forward
regulator [16, 17]. Such continuity assumption leads only
to local stability results, and most of them are unable to
deal with perturbations that change the conduction mode
operation from continuous to discontinuous or vice versa.
In this paper, a robust switched-current control that is
based on a piecewise-continuous description of the system
is proposed. Since the control is not based on average models, the controller is able to regulate inductor current under a
wide range of operating conditions including continuous or
discontinuous conduction mode. Moreover, a cascaded structure can easily be used to perform voltage regulation also, by
dening an inner-switched-current loop and an outer-voltage
loop. The current controller is able to ensure active current
sharing, which makes it ideal for implementing powermanagement strategies. It is proved that the closed-loop
converter trajectories converge globally and asymptotically
to a bounded set in a robust manner; that is, in spite of
bounded model uncertainty. The proposed strategy is easy
to implement and has the advantage of remaining simple, in

IET Control Theory Appl., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 10, pp. 13981407
doi: 10.1049/iet-cta.2013.0015

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spite of the number of converter cells. The results are illustrated in a two-cell boost converter; however, they can be
easily applied to other topologies also.
This paper is organised as follows: some denitions and
preliminaries are provided in Section 2. System modelling
is shown in Section 3; the stability of the converter under a
switching sequence is analysed in Section 4, as well as some
implementing issues. Numerical simulations and experimental results are shown in Section 5, and nally, Section 6
summarises the main contribution of this paper and presents
some conclusions.

topologies with a general description as follows

x (t) = A (t) x(t) + B (t)

where x is the state vector, is a discrete event which

describes the commutation and the translation vector B (t)
that accounts for the input voltage action. For analysis purposes, we will assume that current dynamics in (4) admits
an approximate description of the form
di
= ml ,
dt

Preliminaries

In this section, basic denitions to state the main contribution of this paper are introduced. Let us consider the
integrator switched system
z = al ,

l L = {1, . . . , M }

(1)

where al Rm (al  = 0) are constant vectors and z Rm .

The election of the active subsystem is performed by the
switching law S, which denes a switching sequence for
a given initial condition (z0 , t0 )
(z0 , t0 ) = = {(l1 , 1 ), (l2 , 2 ), . . .}

(2)

where k = tk tk1 and lk L for k = 1, . . .. In this way,

is a collection of pairs which indicates that subsystem lk
is active in the interval [tk1 , tk ). Observe that there is no
restriction over times tk1 , tk other than tk1 < tk .
Asymptotic stability of the switched system (1) cannot
be obtained because, in general, such a system does not
have a common equilibrium point. Therefore the following
concepts are introduced.

t 0

Remark 1 (Switching law): It is clear that for stability purposes, the objective is to set an arbitrary value of > 0 and
then compute the required = () > 0 that satises such
condition. Observe that in view of this fact, the stability
condition in Denition 1 denes a switching surface in the
boundary of B(0, ).
Denition 2 [18]: The switched system (1) is said to be practically asymptotically stable around the origin under S
if it is -practically stable and the origin is -attractive; that
is, if there exists = () > 0, such that
z(0) < T = T () 0 : z(t) <

t T

(3)

when condition (3) is satised for all z(0) Rm , the origin

is globally -attractive, and in this case the switched system
is said to be globally -practically asymptotically stable.

Converter model

As stated before, the case of interleaved converters is used as

a benchmark to study controller synthesis and implementation; however, the proposed strategy can be applied to other
IET Control Theory Appl., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 10, pp. 13981407
doi: 10.1049/iet-cta.2013.0015

l {1, . . . , 2n }

(5)

whereby n is the number of inductors. In this work, using

description (5), we will show that the current and voltage
dynamics is globally -practically asymptotically stable in a
robust manner; that is, in spite of the uncertainty induced
by approximation (5).
In the following example, it will be shown how approximation (5) can be derived.
3.1 Example: two cells boost interleaved
converter
Consider the piecewise model of the two cells- boost interleaved converter given in Fig. 1. Every operation mode can
be modelled as follows
x = Al x + B,

l L = {1, . . . , 4}

(6)

where x R3 , is constituted by inductor currents vector

i = [i1 , i2 ] = [x1 , x2 ] and the output voltage (v = x3 ). B =
[E/L1 , E/L2 0]T , where E is the input voltage. The continuous system is subjected to discrete time event l or switching
that denes the active mode and

Denition 1 [18]: The switched system (1) is said to be practically stable around the origin under the switching law
S if > 0 there exists = () > 0 such that
z(0) < z(t) <

(4)

A1

if l = 1,

A2

if l = 2

A3

if l = 3,

A2

if l = 4

(7)

Congurations l = 1, . . . , 3 correspond to operation stages

(a) to (c) in Fig. 1, respectively, with

0
0
0
A1 = 0
0 1/C

0
A3 = 0
1/C

0
1/L2 ,
1/CR

0
0
A2 =

0
0
0

0
0
,
1

RC

0 1/L1
0
0
0 1/CR

where L1 , L2 , C and R are inductances, capacitance and

resistive load values, respectively.
Remark 2: Owing to converter design considerations,
usually the nominal frequency (1/RC) is small compared
with the design-switching frequency (fs ); therefore the output voltage remains constant for short times (O(1/fs )).
Under this condition, it can be seen that inductor current
in (6) evolves describing piecewise linear trajectories. In
particular, for the two-cell boost converter this integrator
3
approximation is given by mjoff = Ex
 0, and mjon = LEj 
Lj
0, where j = 1, 2.
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L1

D1

L1

D1

L2

D2

L2

D2

Vi
Sw1

Sw2

Vo

Sw2

L1

D1

L2

D2

L2

D2

Sw2

RL

Vo

Vi

Sw1

RL

Vo

RL

Vo

Sw2

Operation modes of a 2-cell interleaved boost converter

Note that since n = number of inductors, there are 2n

switch congurations among stages, which are




m1on
m1off
, m2 =
,
m1 =
m2on
m2off




m1on
m1off
m3 =
, m4 =
m2off
m2on
Remark 3: It is clear that if each inductor current ij , j =
1, . . . , n, is conned in a region of measure j , for example,
B(ij , j ), (i.e. a ball centred in ij and radius j ) the current
vector

i = [i1 , . . . , in ] can be conned in a region of measure

= 12 + + n2 . Furthermore, notice that from inspecting the structure of (6)(7), when the j-switch is off, the
dynamic of the output voltage is affected by the inductor
currents as follows
x 3 =


|l |(ml ) + n+1
l=k+1 |l |(ml ) be the convex cone generated by the
vectors
m1 , . . . , mk1 , mk+1 , . . . , mn+1

then Rn = n+1
k=1 Ck , where Ck k = 1, . . . , n + 1 have mutually disjoint interiors (i.e. constitute a partition).
Observe that if i Rn is inside a cone Ck for some 1
k n it can be expressed as
k1
l=1

i=

Robust current switched control

Inspired in [18], the main contribution of this paper is to

prove global -practical asymptotic stability of converter
trajectories and both maximum current and voltage ripple
in the face of uncertainty (that is, even if approximation
of Remark 2 is not good). To this end, in this section we
will analyse rst the stabilisation conditions for the case of
known parameters and then extend them to the case when
they are uncertain.
Exact model knowledge

Let us consider the model of known parameters shown

in (5). To guarantee stability in this case, we will
need to establish the existence of a subset {m
1 , . . . , mn+1 }
of {m1 , . . . , m2n } which satises that Rn = { n+1
k=1 k mk :
k 0} (see [18]). This condition also implies the
existence of at least n + 1 vectors mk , such that any
set of n are linearly independent. Moreover, let Ck =
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k1


|l |(ml ) +

l=1

n+1


|l |(ml )

(8)

l=k+1

Such expression is unique, since the current dimension is n.

Moreover, (8) constitutes a conic combination and can be
interpreted as follows: let |l | be the dwell time in system
ml by nding (8) we have found a control switching signal
that drives i to the origin, by using the sequence

2

xj
x3

C
CR
j=1

Hence, voltage trajectories will be conned in another

bounded region, for example, B(v, ), since the voltage
dynamics act as a stable lter [19], with time constant (RC).

4.1

Sw1

D1

Sw1

Vi

L1

Vi

Fig. 1

RL

= {(l1 , |1 |), . . . , (lk1 , |k1 |), (lk+1 , |k+1 |), . . . ,

(ln+1 , |n+1 |)}

(9)

Moreover, if Rn = n+1
k=1 Ck we can guarantee that every
i Rn can be driven to the origin. The facts above let us
guarantee the connement of the current trajectories and
therefore the -practical asymptotic stability.
In the following section, we will analyse the stability of
the uncertain case.
4.2

Uncertain case

Let the real description of the current dynamics be given by

di
(10)
= ml +
ml l {1, . . . , 2n }
dt
where ml is the nominal behaviour of the system and
ml
is a term that accounts for the uncertainty. Let
ml satisfy 
ml  < l . If the switching sequence (9) is used in
system (10), Is the system (10) globally -practically asymptotically stable? The answer is yes, and Theorem 1 states
formally such result. To state clearly the result, in the following it will be assumed that there exists at least n + 1
vectors (ml ) linearly independent, this in fact is a condition
of stabilisation as stated in [18].
IET Control Theory Appl., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 10, pp. 13981407
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n+1

Theorem 1: Let |k | such that


ml  < l with

l=1

|l |ml = iref and let

is the current after sequence has been applied the p-times.

Using (11), we have
V (p + 1) V (p) = ipT A Tk A k ip ipT ip

1
1ln+1 A1 
l

max (l ) < min

1ln+1

where Al  [m1 . . . ml1 , ml+1 . . . mn+1 ], for l = 1, . . . , n +

1; hence current trajectories (10) are globally practically
asymptotically stable for the switching sequence (9); that
is, there exists a time T < such that for all t > T , i
B(iref , ) and v B(vref ,  ).
In order to introduce the proof of this theorem, the
following observations
are pertinent. Note that conditions

in Theorem 1, n+1
|
|m
k = iref , iref = [iref ,1 , . . . , iref ,n ] and
l
l=1
iref ,j stand for the current reference in inductor j, implying that the state [x1 , . . . , xn ] = iref can be obtained by a
switching sequence (9).
Now assume without loss of generality, that the rst time
the trajectories of i(t) reach iref , subsystem lk is active. Such
system will inevitably lead the current away from iref since
the system behaves as an integrator. Let 0 < < , it is clear
that as time evolves, trajectories will hit the ball B(iref , );
once this occurs, we can apply another sequence (which is
a function of departing conditions). This sequence can be
repeated indenitely to ensure that i(t) B(iref , ). This is
the idea that will be used in the proof.
Proof of Theorem 1: To simplify description and without
loss of generality, let us assume that iref = 0. Stability about other references can be proved with the help
of a simple change of variables i iref . Denote k 
[1 , . . . , k1 , k+1 . . . , n+1 ]T , then k = A1
k i0 and since
in+1 =

k1


|l |
ml +

l=1

n+1


|l |
ml

l=k+1

then in+1 =
Bk k where
Bk  [
m1 . . .
mk1

mk+1 . . .
mn+1 ].
Therefore in+1 =
Bk A1
k i0 . In general if in+1 Cj , j  = k,
consecutive application of sequences leads to the discrete
switched system
i(p + 1) =
Bk A1
k i(p),

k {1, . . . , M }

(11)

In order to prove global attractiveness under , rstly, we

must show that every matrix
Bk A1
is Schur stable. It is
k
known that

Bk  max {l },
1ln+1

k {1, . . . , n + 1}

using max1ln+1 {l } < min1ln+1

1
, k {1, . . . , n + 1}, that is
A1 

1
A1
k 


, then 
Bk  <


Bk A1
k 

0 = c c = lim V (p + 1) lim V (p)

(12)

Bk A1
k

denote the eigenvalues of

then
Let
1
max1ln+1 {|l (
Bk A1
)|}
<

B

A

and
hence
k
k
k
max {|l (
Bk A1
k )|} < 1

1ln+1

That is, the matrices are Schur. On the other hand, consider
the positive-denite function V (ip ) = ipT ip , where ip = i(tp )
IET Control Theory Appl., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 10, pp. 13981407
doi: 10.1049/iet-cta.2013.0015

= lim (V (p + 1) V (p))
p

lim ip 2 0
p

Since the function is lower- and upper-bounded by zero

limp ip 2 = 0, it implies that the origin of (11) is asymptotically stable and therefore attractive. Finally to show that
the trajectories remain in a neighbourhood of the origin,
note that it is possible to upper bound the norm of the trajectories of the system within the time interval [T , T + tn ),
by where = max{i(T ), i1 , . . . , in }. Therefore if
i(T ) B[0, ] (we have already shown that the origin is
attractive)
i(t) +

ml +
ml |l |

l=1

+ max (ml  + l )
1ln

|l |

l=1

n
In [18] it is shown that
l=1 |l | G1 , where G1 is a
number that is a function of the nominal system (i.e. ml )
hence


i(t) 1 + max (ml  + l )G1
1ln+1

= 1 + max1ln+1 (ml  + l )G1 with G1 as

Dening G
leads to i(t)
in [18], hence a value of = /G,
for all t [T , T + tn ). By repeating successively the time
sequences |l |, it is possible to obtain that i(t) t > T .
Finally, to show that the voltage remains in the neighbourhood v B(vref ,  ) as well, consider the following. Once
the ball B(iref , ) is reached by current dynamics (at time
t = T ), a second sequence is followed to ensure that the
current trajectories do not escape from the ball B(iref , ).
Using Remark 2 and the locally one-to-one map that relates
every voltage reference with a current reference and current
phase , one can also conclude voltage connement in a
region v B(vref ,  ). This concludes the proof.

4.3

<1

l (
Bk A1
k ),

2
where A k =
Bk A1
k . Hence V (p + 1) V (p) (Ak 
1)ip 2 ip 2 .
Note that V (p) is strictly decrescent and lower-bounded
hence liml V (l) = c. Therefore

Implementing issues

As we have seen in the above section, the use of the

sequence guarantees the -practical asymptotic stability of
converter trajectories to a desired reference. Such sequence
corresponds to a control sequence for the switched system
(10) and in order to implement the strategy in an actual
converter, it has to be translated into turn-on and turn-off
actions of every active switch. To illustrate how this can be
performed, we depart from the discussion in Remark 2. In
this case, every subsystem of the switched system (5) was
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i ref

Vref

PI

Robust Current
Controller

Interleaved Boost
Converter

Vo
iL

inner loop

Amplification Gain
outer loop

Voltage
Divider

Fig. 2

Proposed multi-loop structure to accomplish voltage regulation

derived using all the possible combinations of the on and

off states of switching devices. That is, every subsystem
in (5) corresponds to a unique representation of the state
of switching devices in the actual converter. Therefore in
view of (2), can be implemented by directly applying the
corresponding switch conguration in the converter, at the
required time.
Now, we will focus on how to compute from current
measurements. We depart from the observation in Remark 1;
denes a switching surface
that is, the equation = /G
in the boundary of B(0, ). In other words, if the current
vector is already in the ball B(0, ), it is enough to wait
until the trajectories hit the ball boundary and then compute
the switching sequence using expression in Theorem 1, that
is, compute |k | of
n+1


|k |mk = iref

(13)

k=1

where |k | actually constitutes the dwell time in subsystem

mk . In fact, expression (13) can be used to approach the reference regardless if the condition is outside or inside the ball
B(0, ). In order to clarify how to compute the dwell times
|k |, notice that as stated before, iref is expressed as a conic
combination of subsystems mk . That is, one can use the state
space partition in cones to nd the residence time as pointed
out in the proof of Theorem 1, and apply it consecutively.
On the other hand, the control voltage can be implemented
using a cascade controller. In this case, the master controller
or outer-loop is constituted by the voltage controller, while
the slave controller or inner-loop is given by the switched

controller proposed above. This multi-loop controller structure is depicted in Fig. 2. Moreover, the voltage controller
can be dened by the designer (i.e. robust, adaptive, etc.) In
Section 5, a PI controller is used for simplicity. However,
as pointed out before, other controllers can be used, borrowing, therefore their corresponding properties: robustness,
adaptability, etc.
Remark 4 (First-order systems): It is worthwhile to notice
that in the case of rst-order systems, the cones above
are lines and the ball B(0, ) is actually the closed interval [iref , iref + ]. Note also that the expression (13) is
reduced only to two possibilities (i) |1 |m1 = iref for initial conditions above iref + or (ii) |2 |m2 = iref for initial
conditions below iref . Applying such expressions consecutively, one can stabilise the system. In this way, it can be
observed that the control strategy proposed in this paper is
actually the hysteresis control for rst-order systems; therefore our approach can be interpreted as a generalisation of
hysteresis control to high-order systems.
Remark 5 (Identical inductors): It was pointed out above,
that one can obtain any current reference in a given inductor independently of the current in other inductors (provided
the accomplishment of energy conservation law). That is,
the switching sequence is constituted of n independently,
possible asynchronous sequences 1 , . . . , n . However, if
the inductors are equal with identical initial conditions, the
switching sequence of one inductor can be used to stabilise
the others. In particular, the sequence with a time delay
< max . If the system is operating under a xed frequency,
such delay can be interpreted as the introduction of a phase
in the switching sequence. Therefore stabilisation of the

+5V
+5V
Power
supplies

Upper
boundary

R1
3k
VCC

VEE

Inductor
current

Ic1a
LM393T

Ic2a
74LS00

+5V

+5V
R2
3k

To SW

VCC

Lower
boundary
Current
control
circuit

Fig. 3

DC/DC
converter

VEE

Ic1b
LM393T

Ic2b
74LS00

Left: Experimental setup; right: current control circuit

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doi: 10.1049/iet-cta.2013.0015

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converter can be performed using a feedback of one the
inductors and the output voltage. It is interesting to notice
that commonly, interleaved converters are operated with a
phase 360/N between driving signals, this election is only
one of the possible stabilising sequences.
Remark 6 (Advantages and disadvantages): The proposed
control strategy has three main advantages. First, the controller design is not based on averaged models; therefore the
description of the converter remains relatively simple and no

Fig. 4

a priori assumptions of the conduction mode are required.

Second, the description and synthesis of the controller are
simple and their complexity does not increase with the number of stages of the converter (i.e. it is required to solve (8)
and apply consecutively sequence (9)). Finally, the proposed
methodology is robust to parameter uncertainty and the conditions for the existence of this property are clearly stated
(Theorem 1). However, a drawback of the robust current
controller (RCC) is that it requires fast control actions. In
general, the lower the current ripple, the faster the control

Experimental evolution of currents and voltage under steady-state conditions for 1 = 2 = 0.5A (left) and 1 = 2 = 0.25A (right)

Fig. 5 Experimental evolution of currents and voltage under steady-state conditions for iref = [0.777, 0.804]A (left) and
iref = [0.475, 0.489] A (right)

Fig. 6 Boost converter unbalanced case operating in continuous (left) and balanced case close to discontinuous conduction mode (right).
Experiments
IET Control Theory Appl., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 10, pp. 13981407
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Current (A)

2.5

1.5

0.5

10

15

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

20

25

30

35

40

45

Voltage (V)

40
35
30
25
20

Time (s)
Fig. 7

Tracking voltage in experiments

Fig. 8 Time evolution of the converter with the proposed feedback, under (left) step-load changes of 50%, (right) source voltage changes
of 65%

actions are needed. In this way, the performance of the

controller is limited by the band-width of the controller; this
characteristic is shared with existing controllers.

L1 = L2 = 330 H, C = 6.8 F, the nominal resistance and

frequency are R = 50 , F = 40 kHz, E = 20 V; a sample
time of 200 s was considered.

5.1

Illustrative example

The objective of this section is to evaluate robustness and

performance of the proposed control strategy as well as illustrate the implementing issues discussed above. To this end,
we use experimental work and simulations in the two-cell
boost interleaved converter. The experimental set up is
shown in Fig. 3.
The converter is designed to operate at a maximum of
2 KW (100 V @20 A), and it has the following parameters:
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Experimental results

The control law was implemented using an ad hoc designed

digital circuitry because of its simplicity (see Fig. 3 (right));
however its execution can be performed using FPGA or DSP
commercial boards, which constitute an advantage of the
proposed methodology.
As a rst step in illustrating the controller performance,
inductor currents were regulated using different amounts of
ripple. The results are displayed in Fig. 4 for steady-state
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Voltage (V)

45

40
Hinf
Reference

35

30

0.001

0.002

0.003

0.004

0.005
Time (s)

0.006

0.007

0.008

0.009

0.01

Voltage (V)

45

40
LQR
Reference

35

30

0.001

0.002

0.003

0.004

0.005
Time (s)

0.006

0.007

0.008

0.009

0.01

Voltage (V)

45

40
Proposed controller
Reference

35

30

0.001

0.002

0.003

0.004

0.005
Time (s)

0.006

0.007

0.008

0.009

0.01

45

Proposed controller
Reference

Voltage (V)

40

35

30

0.001

0.002

0.003

0.004

0.005
Time (s)

0.006

0.007

0.008

0.009

0.01

Fig. 9 Time evolution of the voltage converter under (top) proposed controller and its comparison with others, (bottom) sinusoidal load
changes

conditions and (a) 1 = 2 = 0.5 A and (b) 1 = 2 = 0.25 A,

respectively, in every inductor current for the balanced case.
It is possible to observe that the current as well as its ripple
are successfully regulated to the desired value. This fact can
also be observed in Fig. 5. In the rst experiment of Fig. 5
(left), the output voltage is 30 V, with iref = [0.777, 0.804] A
while in the second the output voltage is 20 V with
iref = [0.475, 0.489] A and the same maximum ripple of
(0.350 A). Moreover, this gure also shows the corresponding voltage ripple under each of the above conditions.
Since the controller is not based on averaged models, the
current control scheme can be applied to a wide number of
IET Control Theory Appl., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 10, pp. 13981407
doi: 10.1049/iet-cta.2013.0015

operation conditions. This fact is illustrated in Fig. 6 where

continuous and nearly discontinuous conduction- mode is
obtained by controlling current reference (balanced and
non-balanced case). In the rst experiment (Fig. 6 left),
the current is non-balanced among the inductors iref =
[0.871, 0.614] A, while in the second, one inductor is forced
to operate in the limit of discontinuous conduction mode in
a balanced case iref = [0.430, 0.430] A. It can be observed
that the ability of the controller to regulate the current and
its ripple is only limited by physical constraints.
To illustrate the use of this controller along a voltageregulation loop, in this paper a continuous PI controller is
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www.ietdl.org
used to set current references. In Fig. 7, it can be observed
the time evolution of the inductor currents and output voltage for a two-cell boost converter, under appropriate PI
tuning. It is worthy to note the data in Figs. 7, 8 comes
from an I/O Dspace board and was plotted using Matlab.
It is chosen this way, to show efciently the performance
of the experiment, due the relatively slow dynamics of the
capacitor. In Fig. 7, the system is subjected to changes in
the reference voltage and it can be observed that the voltage regulation is performed successfully. On the other hand,
Fig. 8 (left) shows the time evolution of the inductor current
and output voltage of the converter in the face of 50% load
disturbance. In this case, the balanced case is solved (i.e.
iref ,1 = iref ,2 ).
It can be observed at the left of Fig. 8 that the controller
can limit the current and voltage ripple successfully and also
observed that the ability to track the voltage will depend on
choice of the outer-loop (in the case PI controller).
Since main applications of interleaved converters are
in vehicle powertrain, a main concern about current controllers is its robustness in presence of changes in inputvoltage. Such voltage variation may be induced by fuel
cell operation [20] or regenerative brake conditions. Fig. 8
(right) shows the performance of the proposed controller
under dramatic voltage input changes. It can be seen that
the inductor currents can be successfully controlled.
5.2

Numerical simulations


(14)

where x , u are deviation variables with Q = diag(10, 10, 20),

N = 0, R = 5. The solution was computed off-line using
the ideal averaged model of the converter. The reference
model for the H synthesis was obtained from an ideal
closed loop behaviour of the converter that satises (14)
for a fair comparison (see [23] for a synthesis details). It is
observed that the use of averaged models for control purposes inherently limits the control response to be, at most,
as fast as the averaged behaviour. Such limitation does not
occur when piece-wise continuous (PWC) model-based control is used, since the current reference can tracked from the
second switching instant.
On the other hand, we have added simulations to illustrate
the performance of the proposed controller under sinusoidal load changes (R = 50 + 5 sin(2t120)), product of
dynamic loads (see Fig. 9, right). It is possible to observe
that the voltage can be successfully regulated under such
conditions.

8
1

4
5
6

7
8
9
10

11
12
13

14
15
16

Conclusions

In this work, a robust current switching control that is able to

ensure current regulation and maximum current and voltage
rippling is proposed. It is proved that the proposed controller
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Acknowledgment

I. Cervantes, A. Mendoza-Torres, I.A. Diaz-Diaz acknowledge nancial support from CONACYT Grant FORDECYT
No. 190966.

Simulations to compare the performance of the proposed

controller with those in the literature are performed in this
section. We have chosen LQR [21] and H control [22],
since both approaches guarantee a good control performance. The controllers were implemented in a non-ideal
model of the converter using SimPowerSystems library of
Matlab. The control gains of the LQR were computed by
minimising the cost function
J (x, u) = (xT Qx + u T Ru + 2xT N u ) dt

leads to global -practical asymptotic stability of a desired

set. Performance of the proposed controller is evaluated during transient and steady-state conditions with experimental
work and its comparison with other controllers is performed
in simulations. The results show that the proposed strategy
is effective for current and voltage ripple as well as for
current limitation and voltage regulation. The proposed controller has a simple structure and has the advantage of being
easy to design even if the number of cells in the converter
is high.

17

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