International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 4, Issue 7, July 2014 1

ISSN 2250-3153

Improvement of Power Quality Using PWM Rectifiers

Mahasweta Bhattacharya*
*
ECE, Future Institute of Engineering & Management, Kolkata

Abstract- The paper presents the modeling, simulation and

analysis of an AC-DC converter based PWM rectifier. It provides a. Uncontrolled rectifiers - Diodes as switches
a suitable control algorithm for a pulse width modulation rectifier
which reduces ripple from the DC output side as well as shapes b. Phase-controlled rectifiers - SCR (silicon
the input current properly. The basic objective of a PWM controlled rectifiers)
rectifier is to regulate the DC output voltage and also ensure a
sinusoidal input current and unity power factor operation. This is c. Pulse-width modulation rectifiers - IGBTs
implemented by high speed IGBT switches connected in anti (insulated gate bipolar transistors) or power
parallel mode across the rectifier diodes. The output voltage is MOSFETs (metal oxide field-effect transistors)
controlled by switching these IGBTS and higher order ripples at
the output can be easily eliminated with the help of passive The ability to control the system to obtain unity power factor
filters. Lower order harmonics are eliminated using PWM operation of a boost rectifier is an important feature of the
technique. The control subsystem generates gating pulse to the rectifier topology. The power factor (PF) is defined as the ratio of
universal bridge by passing the output voltage through a network working power to apparent power. The power quality problems,
consisting of comparator, discrete PI controller and discrete such as large values of harmonics, poor power factor and high
PWM generator. The output of this generator are the gating total harmonic distortion, are usually associated with operations
pulses to be applied to the universal bridge. By this control of AC to DC converters. An increase in the current harmonics
method, we have tried to reduce the input current harmonic and a decrease in the displacement power factor in AC power
distortion and bring the input current and voltage in same phase lines produced by diode and thyristors are serious problems.
as well as make it sinusoidal. The control of modulation
index(m) and phi has been shown in the closed loop system. This Pulse width-modulation (PWM) rectifiers in distribution systems
paper presents the state of the art in the field of regenerative represents the best solution, in terms of performance and
rectifiers with reduced input harmonics and improved power effectiveness, for elimination of harmonic distortion as well as
factor. The influence of the discussed modulation methods on the power factor correction, balancing of loads, voltage regulation
line current distortion and the switching frequency has been and flicker compensation. Sinusoidal PWM is a technique
examined. The simulation results of the presented techniques employed where the sinusoidal waveform or modulation signal is
have been demonstrated and concluded for various load compared with a very high frequency triangle or carrier signal to
resistance. obtain the switching pulses for the device. A method of
identification of supply current will be developed by using
Index Terms- Improvement of Power Quality, PWM MATLAB/Simulink for elimination of the harmonics of current
Rectifiers and to obtain a sinusoidal current of the line.

I.1 Problem Identification

I. INTRODUCTION
The problems that tend to occur due to harmonic distortions and From the study in this paper, there are a large number of
power factor variations are known and are under discussion for switching converter topologies and composite switching
quite some time now. Large number of solutions has also been converters are possible. The power quality problems, such as
proposed like static VAR compensators passive or active filters large values of harmonics, poor power factor and high total
which would improve the quality of the power that is delivered to harmonic distortion, are usually associated with operation of
the mains. AC/DC converters. The other important problem is that the input
current and voltage waveforms are not in phase due to the
A switching power rectifier in the power system converts distortions. There have been many approaches to mitigate the
one level of electrical energy into another level of electrical harmonics and other problems in the rectifier system.
energy. Converters in the AC to DC conversion field are the most
widespread and the operation of a converter can be explained in
terms of the input quantities, output quantities and the switching
pattern used to obtain the preferred output.

Types of semiconductor devices used in the rectifier are as I.2 Objective of paper
follows:

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The objective in this paper is to develop and compare in term of

method or topology of AC/DC rectifier which more efficient and
able to solve the nonlinear problem with optimum way.

a. To reduce the THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) within

5%.

b. Input voltage and current should be in the same phase

i.e. unity power factor.

c. The input current should be sinusoidal.

I.3 PWM Rectifier

The PWM bidirectional converter draws a near sinusoidal input

current while providing a regulated output dc voltage and can
operate in the first and second quadrants of the voltage–current
plane. The controlled current is a perfect sinusoidal. So the
circuit can work in both the quadrants, so the rectifier is
bidirectional.

Fig.1 Single Phase Full Bridge Rectifier

PWM rectifiers can be divided into two groups according
to power circuit connection – the current and the voltage type. The rectifier consists of 4 IGBT transistors, which form a
For proper function of current a type rectifier, the maximum full bridge, the input inductance and the capacitor at the output. It
value of the supply voltage must be higher than the value of the is controlled by pulse width modulation. Supply voltage Us and
rectified voltage. The main advantage is that the voltage at the rectifier input Ur are sinusoidal waveforms
the rectified voltage is regulated from zero. They are suitable for separated by the input inductance. The energy flow therefore
work with DC loads (DC motors, current inverters) For proper depends on the angle between these two phasors. See the phasor
function, voltage type rectifiers require higher voltage on the DC diagram below
side than the maximum value of the supply voltage. The rectified
voltage on the output is smoother than the output voltage of the
current type rectifier. They also require a more powerful
microprocessor for their control.

Output voltage lower than the voltage on input side can

be obtained only with increased reactive power consumption.
The function of the rectifier depends on the supply type of
network. There are two types of supply network – “hard” and
“soft”. Ordinary rectifiers, which work on a relatively “hard”
supply network, do not affect the shape of the supply voltage
waveform. Harmonics produce electromagnetic distortion, and
the network will be loaded with reactive power. The PWM
rectifier aims to consume sinusoidal current and to work with Fig. 2 Phasor diagram
given power factor. A PWM rectifier connected to the “soft”
supply network has more potential to affect the shape of the
supply voltage network. It can be controlled, so the current
consumed by the PWM rectifier will partly compensate the non-
harmonic consumption of other devices connected to the supply
network.

The basic block diagram of one phase PWM rectifier is shown in

Fig 1. II. PROPOSED WORK

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As stated in the objective of the project that our main aim is to As seen in Fig. 3, a ripple at twice of power supply frequency is
reduce the THD and bring input voltage and current in the same present in the DC-link voltage. If this ripple passes through the
phase so we need current control techniques. Basically we have 2 voltage controller it will produce a third harmonic component in
different techniques:- Isref .
This harmonic can be reduced with a lowpass filter at the voltage
a. Hysteresis control measurement reducing the controller bandwidth.

b. Sinusoidal PWM
Fig 4 shows the behaviour of voltage and current delivered by
But in our paper we have used Sinusoidal PWM control the source. The input current is highly sinusoidal and keeps in
Technique. phase with the voltage, reaching a very high power factor of PF
0.99.
II.1 Sinusoidal PWM

In order to suppress these negative phenomena caused by the

power rectifiers, use is made of rectifiers with a more
sophisticated control algorithm. Such rectifiers are realized by
semiconductors that can be switched off IGBT transistors. The
rectifier is controlled by pulse width modulation. A rectifier
controlled in this way consumes current of required shape, which
is mostly sinusoidal. It works with a given phase displacement
between the consumed current and the supply voltage. The power
factor can also be controlled and there are minimal effects on the
supply network.

II.1.1 Control scheme

The classical control scheme is shown in Fig. 3. The control

includes a voltage controller, typically a Proportional-Integrative
(PI) controller, which controls the amount of power required to
maintain the DC-link voltage constant. The voltage controller
delivers the amplitude of the input current. For this reason, the
voltage controller output is multiplied by a sinusoidal signal with
the same phase and frequency than vs, in order to obtain the input
current reference, Isref .

The fast current controller controls the input current, so the high
input power factor is achieved. This controller can be a hysteresis
or a linear controller with a PWM-modulator. Fig. shows the
behaviour of the output voltage and the input current of the
PWM rectifier in response to a step change in the load. It can be
observed that the voltage is controlled by increasing the current,
which keeps its sinusoidal waveform even during transient states. Fig. 4 waveforms
II.2 Modeling of a PWM rectifier

The main aim of this work is to design a controlled rectifier. In

order to design a controlled rectifier at first we need to determine
the reasons to design such a rectifier. This actually is related to
the drawbacks that were faced during the design of a normal
uncontrolled rectifier. They are as follows:
 Input current and voltage waveforms are not in phase
due to the distortions.

 Large values of harmonics

Fig. 3 Control Scheme

 Poor power factor

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 High total harmonic distortion

Thus, in the design of the controlled circuit using PWM
technique, we need the following components and blocks as
The input current should be sinusoidal as well as in phase follows:
with the input voltage so that we get a unity power factor which
is one of the basic objectives of our paper.
Thus we need to use a controlled rectifier which will give i. AC Voltage Source
a desired DC output voltage from an AC supply also avoiding the The AC voltage source is the supply voltage
problems arising and eradicating them. Here we are using the which supplies an AC voltage of 78V rms.
method of PWM Rectification.
ii. Current Measurement Block
IV.1 PWM RECTIFICATION The current measurement block helps in the
measurement of the current that flows through
The most efficient method of controlling the output the circuit. It has 3 connections. A + side
voltage is to incorporate a PWM within the inverter. The output which is kept in the side through which
voltage can be controlled without any additional components. current enters the block. And a side through
Higher order harmonics can be easily eliminated with the help of which the current exits the block. Another port
passive filters. Lower order harmonics are eliminated using
PWM technique. named ‘i’ which is connected to the scope
which shows the measured current. The
The figure below shows power circuit for a controlled PWM ac- current measurement block must be connected
dc converter:- in series with the ciruit in the path where the
current has to be measured.

iii. Volatge Measurement Block

The voltage measurement block helps in the
measurement of the voltage at a particular part
of the circuit. It has again 3 connections. The
+ side which is connected to the positive part
of the circuit and the – side which is connected
to the – part of the circuit.. the other port ‘v’ is
connected to the scope which displays the
measured voltage curve. The voltage
measurement block must be connected to the
circuit in parallel while measuring the voltage.

iv. R-C Branch

2 R-C branches are used with a value of
R=1.5Ohm and capacitance of 2.5µF.

v. Series R-L Branch

A series R-L branch is used as input impedance
with R= 25Ω and Inductance =1.76mH.

vi. Universal Bridge

This block implements a bridge of selected power

electronics devices. Series RC snubber circuits are
connected in parallel with each switch device. For
most applications the internal inductance Lon of
Fig 5 PWM ac-dc converter diodes and thyristors should be set to zero. The
universal bridge block here is implementing a
universal single phase power converter. It consists

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upto 4 switches connected in bridge configuration. g. Forward Voltages( Device Vf, Diode
This block allows simulation of converters using Vfd)
both naturally commutated(or line commutated) Forward voltage has to be set since we
power electronics devices (diodes or thyristors) are using IGBT here. The forward
and forced commutated devices ( GTO, IGBT, voltage is set as 0 thus forming the ideal
MOSFET). This is also the basic block for building case.
two level voltage source converters (VSC). The
bridge should be set in accordance with the h. Fall time (Tf) and Tail time (Tt)
following parameters as follows: Fall time is set as 1µs and Tail time is set
as 2µs.

vii. Load Capacitor

The load capacitor is set to 1650µF.
a. Number of bridge arms
This parameter is set to 2 as we are using viii. Load Resistance
a single phase converter. This makes it a The load resistance is set to 500Ω.
4 switch device.
ix. Second Order Low Pass Filter
b. Snubber Resistance The low pass filter allows to pass the desired
Snubber resistance value is set to 100kΩ. low frequency band centered around the set cut off
This resistance Rs is given as Rs> . frequency. The cut off frequency is set to 200Hz.
The damping factor that is the ξ is set to 0.707 and
the sampling time is set to 50µs. The transfer
c. Snubber Capacitance
function of a second order low pass filter is given
The capacitance is either set to 0 to
provide a high impedence if we are using by: H(s)= ⁄ ⁄ .
RC snubber or it is set to infinity if we are
using only a resistive snubber circuit. The This attenuates higher frequencies more steeply.
snubber circuit mainly eliminates the
snubber from the device that is the rate of x. Zero Order Hold
rise of input voltage thus preventing the
device getting damaged. It also prevents This block samples and holds the input for
numerical oscillations when the device is the sample period specified. We have given a
discretized. The snubber capacitance is sample period of -1 as this makes the block inherit
given by: the sample time. Input to this block can be scalar
Cs< ⁄ or a vector. If the input is a vector block it holds all
the elements of the vector for the same sample
d. Power Electronic Device time.
Since we are using an IGBT bridge we
are selecting the device as IGBT/Diodes.
xi. Powergui Block
e. Ron
The internal resistance Ron of the The Powergui block is necessary for
selected device is set to 1mΩ. simulation of any Simulink model containing
SimPowerSystems blocks. It is used to store the
f. Lon equivalent Simulink circuit that represents the
Lon is set to zero according to the state-space equations of the model.
convention in most real world
applications. The Powergui block allows you to choose
one of the following methods to solve your circuit:
 Continuous method, which uses a variable
step Simulink solver.

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previous sample. The φ is generated through

 Ideal Switching continuous method. the output of the second PI controller.
Reference block actually gives the modulated
 Discretization of the electrical system for current equation. This shows any error if
a solution at fixed time steps. present between reference current and the
actual input current. And the generated output
 Phasor solution method. will be used as a feedback to provide the
necessary phi in a closed loop. This closed loop
gives a stabilized φ. Now the compare Iact and
reference I is fed to a discrete PI controller. PI
controller gives feedback signal to control phi.
Also the output of discrete PI is fed to the
discrete PWM generator. The output of the
discrete PI controller serves as Uref which is
the input for the PWM generator. This
generates pulses for carrier band PWM. In this
the Uref is compared with triangular carriers to
generate two pulses which are then converted
xii. Control Subsystem into Boolean using Boolean block. The two
signals are accordingly connected to form
pulses. Pulses 1 and 3 are respectively for the
The control subsystem generates gating upper switches and pulses 2 and 4 are for the
pulse to the universal bridge. During the lower switches
positive half, switches S1 and S3 are closed
The figure below shows the control subsystem:-
thus forming a path. During the negative half,
switches s2 and s4 are closed thus forming a
path. The various components used in the
control subsystem and there functions and role
in the control strategy are explained below:

Output voltage generated across

capacitive load is compared with a constant
100 to check for any error that might be
present in the output voltage. The error
obtained from the comparator is used for
modulation and is fed into a Proportional-
Integral that is, a PI controller which sets the
desired modulation index. The saturation
block is used after the PI controller to limit the
value between -1 and 1. The modulation is
mainly based on phase modulation. So besides
setting m, we need to set a perfect φ(phi or
phase) for proper modulation.
Fig. 6 Control Subsystem

So we need to obtain c for that we have

used a digital clock and a constant block which
is assigned a value of 2πf. Digital clock set the
sampling period at which instant sample must
be taken such that the outputs are not stuck at a
III. SIMULATION RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS

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Case I:- R=1000Ohm

Fig. 7 Load current and voltage

Fig. 9 FFT analysis

As we can see here the THD for this case is 10.76% which needs
to be decreased further.

Case II :- R=750Ohm

Fig. 8 Input Current and Voltage

Fig.10 Input current & voltage

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Case III :- R=3000K

Fig. 13 Input Current & voltage

Fig. 11 Load current and voltage

Fig. 14 Load current and voltage

Fig. 12 FFT Analysis

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Fig. 17 Load current and voltage

Fig. 15 FFT Analysis

We can see from here that as we increase the value of resistance

the harmonic distortion reduces to much lower value.

Case IV:- 5000k

Fig. 16 Input current and voltage

Fig. 18 FFT analysis

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Case V :- R=10KOhm

Fig. 19 Input current and voltage

Fig. 21 FFT Analysis

Now we see from the above simulation results that the THD is
under control and well below 5% for R=10kΩ which was our
requirement and the input current is sinusoidal as well as in
phase with the input voltage. Thus our objective is met with these
results. For uncontrolled rectifier the THD was 162 % which has
been reduced to 2.39 % by the technique proposed.

III.2 Gating Pulses

Fig. 20 Load current and voltage

Fig. 22 Gating Pulses

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IV. Conclusion 1. Power electronics and motor drives- Advances and trends by
This paper has reviewed the most important topologies and Bimal Bose
control schemes used to obtain AC-DC conversion with 2. Introduction to solid state power electronics- J W Motto
bidirectional power flow and very high power factor. Voltage 3. Principles of electric machines and power electronics by PC
source PWM regenerative rectifiers have shown a tremendous Sen
development from single-phase low power supplies up to high
4. Power Electronics- MD Singh, KB Kanchandani
power multilevel units. Current source PWM regenerative
rectifiers are conceptually possible and with few applications in 5. N. Mohan, T. Undeland, W. Robbins, “Power Electronics:
DC motor drives. The main field of application of this topology Converters Applications and Design,” Wiley Text Books, Third
is the line side converter of medium voltage current source Edition, 2002, ISBN: 0471226939.
inverters. Especially relevant is to mention that single-phase 6. A. Trzynadlowski “Introduction to Modern Power
PWM regenerative rectifiers are today the standard solution in Electronics,” Wiley- Interscience, First Edition, 1998, ISBN:
modern AC locomotives. 0471153036.
7. J. Arrillaga, N. Watson “Power System Harmonics,” John
The control methods developed for this application allow for an Wiley & Sons. Inc, Second Edition, 2003, ISBN: 0470851295.
effective control of input and output voltage and currents, 8. D. Paice “Power Electronic Converter Harmonics - Multipulse
minimizing the size of energy storage elements. The appliance of Methods for Clean Power,” IEEE Press, Second Edition, 1996,
the Carrier-Based Sinusoidal PWM technique may reduce the ISBN: 078031137X.
higher harmonics content in the line currents since the carrier 9. “IEEE 519 Recommended practices and requirements for
signal imposes roughly constant switching frequency of the harmonics control in electrical power systems,” Technical
power transistors. Unlike bang-bang current control carrier-based Report, IEEE Industrial
modulation directly enforces adequate converter input PWM Applications Society/Power Engineering Society, 1993.
voltages to track their reference values. 10. Lettl, J.: Duality of PWM rectifiers. Proceedings of
Electronic Devices and Systems Conference 2003, Brno, 2003.
The simulating and test results have shown that the system based 11. Matlab/simulink/Sim power systems model for a PWM ac-de
on this control logic has better efficiency and has high dynamic converter with line conditioning capabilities by R Paku and R
performance and has distortion well under 5% which is quite Marschalku.
acceptable. The input current and voltage are in phase and even
the input current is sinusoidal which were the basic objectives of
our work. AUTHORS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Mahasweta Bhattacharya,
I am very grateful to my respected faculty and guide Mr. currently pursuing B.Tech in
Susovan Mukhopadhyay, Assistant Professor, Future Institute of Electronics & Communication
Engineering & Management, who helped me to successfully Engineering at Future Institute of
complete this project. I am thankful to him for his perfect Engineering & Management
guidance and motivation and lastly for all his encouraging efforts under West Bengal University of
to complete the project successfully. Technology. Her research interest
includes control system and
analog electronics.
REFERENCES

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