An Effective DC Voltage Regulation of Active Front-End Rectifier through Model Predictive Control

Abstract:
This paper proposes a novel control technique to improve the performance of the active front-end (AFE) rectifier. Employing a finite set model predictive control (FS-MPC) approach, this technique operates without any modulator. The proposed control method accurately and quickly regulates the DC-link voltage by tracking the reference active power, and it also tracks the reference reactive power on the AC side. The idea behind the control technique is to generate the required active power reference for the AC source to facilitate an effective DC voltage regulation without considering a direct control of DC-link voltage. The controller does not rely on awareness of the DC load and is robust to unknown load disturbances. Simulation results in MATLAB/Simulink verify the high and effective performance of the proposed control method.