Sequential design of hysteresis current controller for three-phase inverter

In this paper, a novel multivariable hysteresis current controller for three-phase inverters is presented. Hysteresis controllers are intrinsically robust to system parameters, exhibit very high dynamics, and are suitable for simple implementation. The main drawback of the hysteresis controller is a limited control on transistors’ switching frequency. Very high switching frequency may result if three independent controllers are used. Multivariable solutions were proposed in the literature to solve the problem. In this paper, it is shown how the use of a sequential design for the multivariable controller can further contribute to transistors’ switching frequency reduction, with no significant increase in the hardware implementation complexity. The proposed controller is illustrated and compared with other hysteresis controllers presented in the literature. It ensures a significant reduction of transistors’ switching frequency with respect to the other tested controllers, under the same operating conditions. A prototype controller is also presented. The effects of noise captured by current sensors (especially Hall-effect type) on the performance of industrial hysteresis controllers are discussed. It is shown how the sequential design of the controller can also help in solving this critical problem. Experimental results are reported to confirm the quality of the proposed controller. The system stability condition is derived in Appendix A.