2018

International Symposium on Power Electronics,

Electrical Drives, Automation and Motion

Single Stage Dual Active Bridge AC-DC Converter

with Active Power Decoupling

Davide Gottardo, Liliana De Lillo, Lee Empringham, Alessandro Costabeber, Linglin Chen
PEMC Research Group
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
University of Nottingham
Email: [email protected]

Abstract—The paper introduces a new a isolated DC- power components [4], [5]. This power decoupling
AC DAB converter topology, capable of active power action can be provided on the AC side of the
decoupling on the AC side of the transformer, made up of isolation transformer, or on the DC side. If the
two full bridges with no additional active component. The
power decoupling action is performed on the AC
differential voltage modulated by the DC-side full bridge is
used to control the voltage applied to the primary winding side, the power exchanged through the transformer
of a high-frequency transformer, while the common mode is equal to the power exchanged through the DC
voltage generated by the AC-side full bridge is applied to port of the converter, which is constant, while if
the secondary windings. power decoupling is performed on the DC side, it
The choice of applying the common mode voltage ripple is equal to the power exchanged through the AC
of the AC-side full bridge to the transformer, allows to have port, that oscillates between zero and double DC
the required ripple voltage to transfer the power, while
keeping the differential voltage ripple, that is applied to
power at twice grid frequency. For this reason, AC-
the AC output, at its minimum value, making possible the side power decoupling is usually better in terms of
use of a small AC filter inductor. efficiency of the transformer and its driving circuit.
A control strategy is proposed and validated by simu-
lation. In order to increase the efficiency and/or reduce
This work is being developed at University of Notting-
the number of active devices, single stage AC-DC
ham within the framework of project SENSIBLE.
DAB are used [6]–[9]. However, in the topologies
Index Terms—Active power decoupling, single-phase
system, dual active bridge, DAB, AC-DC DAB.
considered in [8], [9], the ripple current coming
from the transformer is present on the AC modu-
lated output of the converter, and has to be filtered
I. I NTRODUCTION
out by adequate passive filters, while in [6], [7] a
When galvanic isolation is required, the dual ac- reverse blocking capable H bridge is required, with a
tive bridge (DAB) topology is widely used, because total of 8 active switches on the AC side, the same
of its high efficiency and power density [1], [2]. For number required in a two stage converter. In [7]
this reason, many AC-DC converters that require active power decoupling is achieved on the DC side,
galvanic insulation are made by two stages: an while in [8], [9] power decoupling is not provided.
isolated DC-DC DAB stage followed by a VSI or
CSI DC-AC inverter [3]. In case of unidirectional The proposed topology is a single stage AC-
power transfer from DC to AC, such as in PV DC dual active bridge, that provides active power
generation, the AC side bridge can be a simple diode decoupling on the AC side of the converter. The
rectifier, otherwise, a full bridge is used. topology has a total of 4 active switches on the
In case of single phase AC systems, one or more AC side, and the ripple current flowing through the
power decoupling elements have to be included transformer does not appear on the AC modulated
in the converter, in order to deal with the ripple output.

978-1-5386-4941-1/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

497
 C C IC
M
LDC M
IDC
IA IAC LAC VAC IB
CPD
VC
VDC CDC
Ls Ls
Lp
VA VB
C C

Fig. 1: Proposed topology

Ls -M IB

Ip Lp -M IA I L
Ls -M

Vp M VA VB Vp Vs

(a) Primary equivalent circuit (b) V s = (VA + VB )/2, L = Lp − M + (Ls − M )/2

Fig. 2: High frequency equivalent circuit

TABLE I: Circuit parameters

II. P ROPOSED TOPOLOGY
Name Value Unit Name Value Unit
The proposed topology, shown in figure 1, is con- VG 230 VRM S VDC 500 V
stituted by two H bridges, a high frequency trans- CP D 55 μF C 0.1 μF
LAC 0.5 mH M 600 μH
former with one primary and two equal secondary Lp 666 μH Ls 666 μH
windings, a power decoupling capacitor CP D , an AC LDC 10 μH CDC 10 μF
filter inductor LAC , and four DC blocking capacitors
C. Those capacitors are sized in order to block
the flow of DC or low-frequency currents across The DC-side H bridge is used to drive the primary
the transformer windings, while behaving like a side of the transformer, in order to transfer the
closed circuit for the ripple components at switching required power. Power decoupling is performed by
frequency. Since those capacitors are subjected to capacitor CP D on the AC-side, so that the power
high current ripple, low ESR is required. transferred by the transformer is continuous across
The differential voltage modulated by the AC- the entire AC period. Since the voltage ripple ap-
side H bridge is used to control the AC current, plied on CP D can be high, a small capacitance is
while the modulated outputs of its two legs are required, enabling the use of reliable film capacitors.
connected to one end of each of the transformer The AC-side half bridge legs are modulated in
secondary windings, closing the circuit through the phase, with a steady-state duty cycle equal to 0.5 ±
VAC
DC blocking capacitors. This has the equivalent 2VC
, so that the differential voltage is equal to VAC .
effect of applying the common mode voltage ripple
of the AC side H bridge to a single secondary III. C ONTROL STRUCTURE
winding of the high voltage transformer. The DC
blocking capacitors also contribute to lower the The control system is formed by three control
ripple current flowing through CP D , thus reducing loops: the AC current controller, the DC power
its I 2 t stress. controller and the power decoupling capacitor DC

498
 PDC control

VC0 control

PR
C PD

C PD

IAC control

Fig. 3: Control structure

voltage offset controller. The overall control struc- of the full bridge, which is VC , and the differential
ture is shown in figure 3. voltage modulated by the bridge, which is VAC . In
In order to control the system, five measurements the same way, the fundamental component of Vp is
are taken: proportional to VDC . Thus:
• DC voltage and current VDC and IDC ;
Vs ∝ VC − |VAC | (2)
• AC voltage and current VAC and IAC ;
• power decoupling capacitor voltage VC .
Vp ∝ VDC (3)
Substituting in eq.1:
A. DC power
The DC power controller regulates the DC power P ∝ VDC (VC − |VAC |) sin(ϕ) (4)
by acting on the outer phase shift ϕ. Inverting this equation allows to linearise the
Assuming to consider only the fundamental com- control loop that regulates the power, so that in
ponent of the voltages applied to the primary and steady state a constant power reference corresponds
the secondary of the transformer, the power transfer to a constant output of the controller.
is estimated as:
Vp V s B. Power decoupling capacitor offset voltage
P  sin(ϕ) (1) The difference between the instantaneous power
2πfSW L
flowing in the AC port PAC and the power coming
where fSW is the switching frequency, L is the from the DC side P is stored in the capacitor
leakage inductor of the transformer, ϕ is the phase C . Assuming an ideal converter (zero power loss,
PD
shift between the two voltages, and Vp and Vs are constant P and perfectly sinusoidal V and I ),
AC AC
the amplitudes of the fundamental components at the integral of P − P , that is the energy ripple on
AC
switching frequency of the voltages applied to the C , is equal to [10]:
PD
primary and secondary of the transformer, as shown
in figure 2b. P
ER = sin(2ωt) (5)
As Vs is the common mode voltage modulated ω
by the AC full bridge, its amplitude and waveform Since the mean value over the AC period of ER is
change during the grid period. Approximately, the zero, it involves a ripple voltage but does not affect
amplitude of the fundamental component of Vs is the DC offset voltage on the capacitor. In general,
proportional to the difference between the DC-side the mean value of P − PAC is non-zero, and that

499
 Vc, Vac
500 Vac
Vc
[V]

Iac, Idc
5 Iac
Idc
[A]

0
-5
Pac, Pdc
2000 Pac
Pdc
[W]

1000

0.2 outer phase shift

Pdc controller output
0.1

0.15 0.16 0.17 0.18 0.19 0.20 0.21 0.22 0.23 0.24 0.25
s
Fig. 4: Simulation results: step power transfer from 1kW to 0.5kW at t=0.2s

translates in a change of the offset energy on the VAB to be modulated by the AC-side full bridge. A
capacitor, which is approximately proportional to proportional-resonant controller tuned at 50Hz was
the square of its DC voltage offset. chosen.
The capacitor offset voltage controller changes Simple PI controllers were used for all the other
the AC power set-point in order to control the aver- control loops, achieving good simulation results.
age energy stored in the power decoupling capacitor
CP D , while maintaining a constant DC power. In IV. S IMULATIONS
order to remove the 100Hz ripple, a notch filter is In order to validate the proposed control structure,
generally included in the controller [5]. In this case, simulations were made using Simulink and the
instead, the ideal ripple energy, shown in eq.5, is PLECS Blockset simulation tool.
calculated and cancelled out, so that the input of
The circuit parameters used are shown in table I.
the controller is the mean stored energy error. In
The chosen switching frequency fSW is 100kHz.
steady-state, the output of the controller is equal to
Figure 4 shows the behaviour of the converter
the average power losses of the converter, plus a
during a transient from 1kW to 0.5kW.
very small ripple.
C. AC current V. C ONCLUSION
The AC current controller takes the reference The paper introduces a new topology for a iso-
current calculated starting from the reference AC lated DC-AC DAB converter, capable of active
power, and outputs the desired differential voltage power decoupling on the AC side of the transformer,

500
made up of two full bridges with no additional ac- [7] J. You, D. M. Vilathgamuwa, N. Ghasemi, and W. L. Malan,
tive component. The differential voltage modulated “LLC circuit based ripple current suppression method for single
phase bidirectional DC-AC DAB converter,” 2017 IEEE 3rd
by the DC-side full bridge is used to control the International Future Energy Electronics Conference and ECCE
voltage applied to the primary winding of a high- Asia (IFEEC 2017 - ECCE Asia), vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 682–686,
frequency transformer, while the common mode 2017.
[8] G. Castelino, K. Basu, N. Weise, and N. Mohan, “A bi-
voltage generated by the AC-side full bridge is directional, isolated, single-stage, DAB-based AC-DC converter
applied to the secondary windings. with open-loop power factor correction and other advanced
The choice of applying the common mode voltage features,” 2012 IEEE International Conference on Industrial
Technology, ICIT 2012, Proceedings, pp. 938–943, 2012.
ripple of the AC-side full bridge to the transformer [9] F. Jauch and J. Biela, “Combined Phase-Shift and Frequency
allows to have enough ripple voltage to transfer the Modulation of a Dual-Active-Bridge AC-DC Converter with
power, while keeping the differential voltage ripple PFC,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 31, no. 12,
pp. 8387–8397, 2016.
at its minimum value, making possible the use of a [10] D. Gottardo, L. D. Lillo, L. Empringham, and A. Costabeber,
small AC filter inductor. “Differential buck single phase grid connected ac-dc converter
The simulation results confirm the correct be- with active power decoupling using a flipping capacitor,” in
2017 IEEE 8th International Symposium on Power Electronics
haviour of the converter and of the control system. for Distributed Generation Systems (PEDG), pp. 1–5, April
The limited number of active and the small size of 2017.
the required passive components contribute to make
this topology an interesting solution for application
such as PV distributed generation and energy stor-
age solutions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This project has received funding from the Euro-
pean Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation
programme under grant agreement No 645963.

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