Proc.

of the 2017 IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON), Malaysia, November 5-8, 2017

A Novel Variable Width PWM Switching Based

Buck Converter to Control Power Factor Correction
Phenomenon for an Efficacious Grid Integrated
Electric Vehicle Battery Charger
Saurav Das
Dept. of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering
Independent University,Bangladesh
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Email: saurav@iub.edu.bd
Khosru M. Salim
Dept. of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering
Independent University,Bangladesh
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Email: khosru@iub.edu.bd
Dhiman Chowdhury
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina,
United States of America
Email: dhiman@email.sc.edu

Abstract—This paper proposes an innovative approach to
utilizing Buck converter as an ideal Power Factor Correction
(PFC) controller where variable width Pulse Width Modulation
(PWM) switching signals are generated and implemented to
reliably control the voltage and current conversion phenomena.
The developed converter topology is tactically utilized to de-
sign an efficacious grid-connected electric vehicle charger with
substantially ameliorated line Power Factor so that the system
loss can be averted in the case of AC-DC charging circuits. In
order to ensure the sustainability of the proposed method, PSIM
simulation software has been used to emulate a simulation model
of a Battery charging system for Electric vehicles. The simulated
output and evaluated performance parameters provide almost
unity Power Factor (PF) with a Total Harmonic Distortion (THD)
rate of 4.62% which is lower than the maximum allowable value
recommended by IEEE519. The simulation outcome corroborates
the efficiency and validity of the proposed framework.
Index Terms—Battery charger, Buck converter, Discontinuous
conduction mode, Control unit, Electric vehicle, Grid-connected,
Power Factor Correction, Pulse Width Modulation, Total Har-
monic Distortion.
I. I NTRODUCTION
According to the International Energy Outlook report, the
transportation sector is going to increase its share of oil
consumption up to 55% by the year 2030; which indicates
an alarming situation for the developing and underdeveloped
countries where heavy dependence upon importing fossil fuel
is evident [1]. To mitigate this problem, Electric Vehicles (EV)
would be an immaculate and pragmatic solution where the
objective of making zero carbon emission environment can
also be achieved [2].
As these EVs are mostly run by rechargeable batteries and
the batteries are charged from the national grid, an efficient
and effective charging mechanism must be followed to ensure
and maintain the proper power quality (shape and magnitude
stability of the input voltage and current) of the power grid
system. Since this charging process involves two-stage AC to
DC power conversion (mostly diode bridge rectifier is used
which acts as the prominent reactive component), the non-
linear circuitries inject the lower order harmonics into the
utility and such practice is responsible for the degradation
of power factor, substantial voltage distortion and the high
crest factor of the national grid [3], [4]. Additionally, the
Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) rate of the line current
provided by the grid varies from 3% to 28.11% with a Power
Factor of 0.96 while charging batteries for typical EVs; these
statistics clearly indicate a significant amount of degradation
of utility power qualities and poor load power regulation and
maintenance. Similar and even worse consequences may occur
when simultaneously a large number of EVs are connected to
the national grid for battery charging purpose [5].
A considerable amount of research has been conducted over
the years regarding this Power Factor Correction issue with
grid integrated battery charging topologies. Controlling ap-
proaches have been pursued in both unidirectional and bidirec-
tional ways. In the unidirectional charging system, the control-
ling algorithm works only for Grid to Vehicle (G2V). Whereas
the bidirectional controlling mechanism allows functionality
of both Grid to Vehicle (G2V) and Vehicle to Grid (V2G)
aspects.
In the G2V system, the energy flows from the power grid
to the EV. On the other hand, the V2G system allows the
energy flow to the power grid from the stored energy in EV
batteries when it is requested from the grid operators [6].
This energy feedback process is commonly referred to as
regeneration mechanism. Battery charger based on Buck-Boost
PFC Controller for Plug-in EV in Continuous Conduction
Mode (CCM) has been reported in [7]–[10]. In these papers,
a complex methodology called line frequency current shaping
scheme, controlled by Proportional-Integral (PI) controller has
been used to achieve almost unity power factor (0.99). This
PI controller includes inner current control loop and outer
voltage control loop to stabilize the dynamic behavior of
the charging circuit. To generate the switching pulses of the

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 Proc. of the 2017 IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON), Malaysia, November 5-8, 2017

Buck-Boost operation, the instantaneous information of the

line voltage, rectified line current, battery voltage and the
consistent amount of charging current needs to be provided
to PFC controller. Subsequently, for achieving good tracking
of the current reference, the frequency of the current controller
needs to be set as twice as that of the supply line frequency. In
order to simplify the control circuit, converters are designed
to work in Discontinuous Continuous Mode (DCM) topology.
However, the use of this kind of converter is limited to low
power applications [11]–[16]. By using passive filters (proper Fig. 1: Circuit diagram of a fundamental Battery charging
combination of L-C or reactive elements), almost sinusoidal system with input grid voltage of 230 V (r.m.s) and output
line current can be retained. This proposed method is not load bank of 60 V DC
valid for universal line voltage unless a typical switching
scheme is introduced to change the rectifier outcome and such
frameworks have been proposed in [17], [18]. harmonics to the grid. As a result, higher THD rate of line
To overcome these limitations, an easy and simple method current and poor Power Factor of the grid are acquired.
has been proposed here. The crossover distortion of line B. Battery Charging system with Conventional Buck Con-
current which occurs when a Buck converter is used has also verter
been mitigated by applying the larger duty-cycle percentage
variable width PWM signals in the region when the rectified
DC voltage becomes lower than the battery’s DC voltage,
and the opposite mechanism is applied within a suitably
calibrated range when the rectified DC voltage becomes higher
than the Battery’s DC voltage. The automatic optimization
of the converter’s duty cycle facilitates efficacious operation
of the charging unit of the proposed system. Since these
switching patterns (PWM signals) are generated by comparing
a triangular wave signal of a predefined high carrier frequency
(20 kHz) with the rectified DC voltage signal, there is only
need to sense line and load (Battery) voltage to ensure the
application of the constant amount of charging current. In this
manner, the approximate unity Power Factor can be achieved.
Conventional Battery charging schemes, proposed variable Fig. 2: Circuit diagram of a typical Battery charger based on
width PWM switching based Buck converter topology along Buck converter with fixed duty-cycle operation
with control pulse generation technique, implemented and
tested circuit configurations, simulation result and performance Fig. 2 shows the circuit diagram of a typical Battery
comparison among different investigated charging methodolo- charging system by Buck converter with a fixed width duty
gies are articulated in this paper section-by-section. cycle. However, the drawback of this method is that the current
will be zero when the input rectified voltage is smaller than
II. C ONVENTIONAL BATTERY C HARGER the Battery voltage [19]. Due to this limitation, the THD rate
In this paper, the electric three-wheeler auto rickshaw, of line current gets higher and the Power Factor of grid power
known as Easy Bike, is considered as a reference vehicle for remains poor.
design and implementation of an innovative Buck converter
III. OVERVIEW OF THE S YSTEM T OPOLOGY
based Battery charger. Generally, an Easy Bike’s Battery bank
consists of 5 batteries (12 V and capacity of 100 Ah each)
which are connected in series to make the operating voltage
60 V and capacity of 6000 Wh in nature.

A. Fundamental Battery Charging Process

The conventional grid integrated Battery charging system
is presented in Fig. 1. Here step-down transformer is used
in order to subside the grid’s AC voltage to an extent little
bit higher than the Battery voltage level. This AC voltage
is then rectified by the bridge rectifier which gets smoother
by the output L-C filter. At this rectifying stage, since the
diode bridge with capacitor acts as a nonlinear load, it injects Fig. 3: Functional diagram of the proposed charging system

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 Proc. of the 2017 IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON), Malaysia, November 5-8, 2017

Fig. 3 presents the functional diagram of the proposed

charging system of EV. The input AC power from the national
grid will be rectified to its equivalent DC power by using the
conventional diode bridge rectifier. This rectified DC power
will be fed to Buck converter to make the voltage level
down to the Battery charging level. In order to control boost
charging technique, the required pattern of PWM signal will be
processed in Control unit. The output power of Buck converter
will then be fed to the Battery bank.
Fig. 5: Rectification of AC power provided by national grid
of 230 V (r.m.s.)

Fig. 4: Functional diagram of the control unit to generate

variable width PWM switching signal Fig. 6: Implemented comparator topology to generate PWM
switching signal
Fig. 4 shows the functional diagram of the control unit.
To generate the variable PWM Signal the comparator needs
to compare two signals. One is 20kHz triangular wave and
the other is the instantaneous rectified DC signal, which
comes from the diode bridge rectifier. In order to control the
charging current rate, the signal conditioner will control the
amplitude of the rectified DC signal. This methodology is the
opposite process of the Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation
(SPWM) signal generation process. The details of SPWM
signal generation process are documented in [20].
A rectified pulsating DC reference signal is compared with a
carrier frequency triangular signal to generate the converter
switch control variable duty-cycle PWM pulse. The duty-
Fig. 7: Circuit diagram of reference Signal and proposed
cycle changes in accordance with the two comparable signal
variable PWM signal generation
quantities. In the follow-up, the converted voltage level gets
higher or lower than the load Battery bank.
Vp − Vr
d= (1)
Vp
Here, d is the adjustable duty-cycle of the converter circuit, Vp
is the peak value of the triangular signal and Vr is the variable
rectified pulsating DC signal amplitude.
IV. D ESIGN AND I MPLEMENTATION OF THE P ROPOSED
F RAMEWORK
The overall system design for the proposed Battery charging
method is articulated in the following subsections. Fig. 8: Evaluated Buck converter system for Battery charging
phenomenon with specifications
A. Rectification of National Grid’s provided AC Power
Fig. 5 represents the circuit diagram of the rectification stage
of the grid power. The grid’s AC power will be rectified by B. Reference Signal and Proposed Variable PWM Signal
using the single phase bridge rectifier. This rectified DC power Generation Circuit
will then be fed to the Buck converter in order to charge the Fig. 6 shows the comparator circuit topology to generate
Battery bank to a certain level. variable width PWM signal and Fig. 7 represents the imple-

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 Proc. of the 2017 IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON), Malaysia, November 5-8, 2017

mented circuit configuration of reference pulsating rectified

signal and the proposed PWM switching signal. One is the
grid’s reference voltage and the other one is the triangular
wave with 20 kHz frequency. This triangular wave acts as
the carrier wave. Here the step-down transformer is used for
modulation purposes. The amplitude of the outcome of the
step-down transformer will control the rate of charging current
to the Battery load. The comparator will create the variable
width duty cycle PWM signals by comparing these two input
signals.
C. The Developed Buck Converter for Battery Charging op-
eration
Fig. 10: Frequency domain spectral analysis of grid’s current
The buck converter designed for the proposed system is
shown in Fig. 8. The specified parameters which are consid-
ered for designing the Buck converter are enlisted in Table voltage) acts as a pure sinusoidal wave whereas the current
I. level acts as a discontinuous wave.This discontinuous wave is
TABLE I: Considered specifications of the evaluated Buck only spiky when the voltage level is in the highest position.
converter circuit parameters Fig. 10 shows the frequency domain spectral analysis based on
Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm for the supply current
Parameters Value where it is shown that it contains the odd harmonics which
Input DC Voltage 198.91 V leads to a high distortion rate and poor Power Factor.
Output DC Voltage 70.91 V
B. Battery Charging Phenomenon by Buck Converter with
Maximum Output Current 10.73 A Fixed Width PWM Switching Signal
Applied Switching Frequency 20 kHz
Filter Inductance 5 mH
Filter Capacitance 200 µF
Rated Capacity 760.86 W

V. S IMULATION R ESULT
The simulation result and assessed parameters of the con-
ventional Battery charging system and the proposed method
are presented in the following subsections.
A. Simulated Outcome of the Fundamental Battery Charging
System

Fig. 11: Grid’s voltage and current level while charging

Battery bank

Fig. 11 shows the simulated outcome of the grid’s volt-

Fig. 9: Grid’s voltage and current level while charging
Battery bank
Fig. 9 shows the simulated output of Grid’s voltage and
current level while charging the Battery bank with the funda-
mental battery charging system. Here the input voltage (grid’s
age, and current level while charging Battery bank by the
Buck converter with fixed width (50% Duty-cycle) PWM
signal. Moreover, it shows that there remains phase difference
between supply voltage and current wave. In Fig. 12 the
frequency domain, spectral analysis based on FFT algorithm
is shown for the supply current where it is shown that it also
contains the odd harmonics, leading to a high distortion rate
and poor Power Factor.
C. Battery Charging Operation by the Proposed Buck Con-
verter Methodology with Variable PWM Switching Signal
Fig. 13 shows the simulated variable width PWM signals
based on the proposed switching method. It can be easily
understood by this figure that the width of PWM signals is

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 Proc. of the 2017 IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON), Malaysia, November 5-8, 2017
Fig. 12: Frequency domain spectral analysis grid’s current
for a typical Buck converter charger
Fig. 13: Simulated profile of variable width PWM signal
generation methodology
Fig. 14: Grid’s voltage and current while charging Battery
bank with proposed method
higher where the reference signal (grid AC voltage) gets lower
than the Battery voltage and is lower in the region when the
reference signal (grid AC voltage) becomes higher than the
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Fig. 15: Frequency domain spectral analysis of grid’s current
while charging Battery bank for the proposed method
Battery voltage.
Fig. 14 shows the voltage and current waveform of the grid
after applying the proposed variable width PWM Signals to
Buck converter for Battery charging purpose. Since these two
waveforms are in the same phase, it ensures the lower value
of THD as well as a good Power Factor for the national grid.
Fig. 16: Battery voltage and charging current for the
proposed method
Fig. 15 shows the frequency domain spectral analysis of the
grid’s current. Since only the fundamental frequency (50 Hz)
remains, this analysis proves the effectiveness of this proposed
method.
Fig. 16 represents the waveform of Battery voltage and
charging current. The average rate of the charging current
is 10.73 A. It has been found from the simulation that by
increasing the value of the Inductance of Buck Converter,
the charging current behaves as a continuous wave. However,
the THD rate of Grid’s current crosses the permitted limit of
IEEE519.
 Proc. of the 2017 IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON), Malaysia, November 5-8, 2017
TABLE II: Efficiency comparison among the investigated
charging methodologies
Charging Methodology THD PF
Conventional Charger 0.14909968 0.65005822
Buck Converter[Fixed Width (50%)PWM] 0.14805425 0.69684252
Proposed Method Charging 0.046234244 0.99359891
VI. S IMULATION R ESULT A NALYSIS
For smooth charging (10% of the rated Ah Battery capacity),
the efficiency comparison among the aforementioned methods
is listed in Table II.
According to IEEE519 recommendation, the maximum per-
mitted rate for THD is 0.05 (5%) [21]. From the data obtained
in Table II, it is shown that Battery charging process by
the conventional charger is not efficient since the THD rate
(0.14909968) is 2.982 times higher than the IEEE519 recom-
mended value. Moreover, the Power Factor is not close to
unity. Battery charging process by the typical Buck converter
with fixed width PWM signal obtains THD rate for Grid’s
current of 0.1480 which is 2.96 times higher than that of
the recommended value and the Power Factor is poor in this
case as well. On the other hand, Battery charging by the
proposed system provides a higher Power Factor of 0.9935
with a THD rate of 0.0462, which is lower than the maximum
recommended value of the IEEE519 standard.
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a detailed description of a new switch-
ing method of Buck converter as Power Factor Correc-
tion controller for EV’s Battery charging process has been
documented. A direct comparison of the proposed charging
methodology with the conventional Battery charging process
has been made for the same amount of charging current
condition. The simulated results suggest that by following
this proposed methodology for EV’s Battery charging, Buck
converter can also be used as an ideal Power Factor Correction
controller where almost unity Power Factor can be achieved
with a lower value of THD.
VIII. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are thankful to Mr. Mrinmoy Sarkar (Graduate
Research Assistant at North Carolina A & T State University)
for lively discussions and useful suggestions.
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