A Critical Review of Modulation Techniques

A. Aktaibi, graduate student member, IEEE, M. A. Rahman, life fellow, IEEE, A. Razali, graduate student member, IEEE
Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. Johns, NL, Canada, A1B 3X5
aama38@.mun.ca; mrahman@mun.ca; azziddin.razali@mun.ca
Abstract A review of the state-of-art of Modulation Techniques,
used for switching the Power electronics inverters and
converters, is presented in this paper. It presents a comparison
among various modulation strategies and reviewing their
advantages and disadvantages. Also it gives a short explanation
about the principle of operation of the classic and the advanced
modulation techniques starting with the standard PWM and
finishing with the invention of the wavelet modulation technique
(WM). The output of the wavelet modulated power inverter is
found to be the best approximation of the continuous-time
sinusoidal reference signal over all other modulation techniques.
Index terms critical review, Carrier based modulation, Carrier
less based modulation, PWM, wavelet modulation.

I.

INTRODUCTION

he DC-AC inverters are electronic devices used to

produce AC power from DC source. This makes them
very suitable for whenever you need AC power as AC mains
power is not always available in remote areas.
Most inverters do their job by performing two main
functions: first they convert the incoming DC into AC, and
then they step up the resulting AC to the needed voltage level
using a transformer. There are many ways to control the
output of the inverters; one of the efficient conventional
methods is the pulse-width modulation (PWM). PWM is a
very efficient way of providing intermediate amounts of
electrical power. A simple power switch with a typical power
source provides full power only when switched on. It is a
comparatively recent technique, made practical by modern
electronic power semiconductor switches.
Modulation techniques are used for switching and operating
inverters and controlled converters in order to produce output
voltages and currents with higher qualities for different types
of loads. By using these modulation techniques we can control
the switching electronic device to get the desired amplitude
and frequency with the desired quality.
Several switching techniques have been so far proposed to
meet the aforementioned objectives by achieving wide linear
modulation range, minimum switching losses and improved
overall inverter efficiency and finally simple implementation
for practical applications [15]. There are many types of
modulation and some of them are:
Carrier based modulation, such as;
1- Sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM)
2- Modified pulse width modulation (MPWM)
3- Random pulse width modulation (RPWM)
4- 3rd harmonic injection PWM
5- Space vector modulation (SVM)

Carrier less modulation, such as;

1- Delta modulation (DM)
2- Specific harmonic elimination (SHE)
3- Wavelet modulation (WM).
The main aim of all of these techniques is to enhance the
output of the inverters in terms of the following reasons. In
other words, these various techniques are designed to control
the inverter switches in order to shape the output ac voltage
and currents to be as close to sine wave as possible. Pulse
width modulation (PWM) is the first approach of modulation
techniques which was developed in the mid of 60s by
Kirnnich, Heinrick and Bowes. The quality of these
techniques can be measured by six factors:
1- The amplitude of the fundamental component,
2- The harmonic content in the inverter output,
3- The effect of harmonics on the source,
4- The switching losses,
5- Controllability,
6- Implementation.
II. THE MODULATION TECHNIQUES
1-Conventional Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM):
The conventional pulse-width modulation is the most
widely used technique all over the world because of its
advantages or because of that its disadvantages do not have
that big concern in most of the applications compared with its
advantages. Some of the advantages of PWM based switching
power converter over the other techniques can be in its easy to
implement and control and in its compatibility with almost all
the modern digital applications. However it has also some
disadvantages that might reduce its volubility in some
applications, such as its attenuation of the fundamental
frequency amplitude, its THD is reduced by increasing the
switching frequency but that will lead to the increase of
switching losses; which means greater stresses on the
associated switching devices and creation of high-frequency
components with high amplitudes.
2-Modified Pulse Width Modulation (MPWM):
The main principle of the MPWM is based on the
comparisons between two low-frequency modulating signals
with a triangular high frequency carrier. The first modulating
signal is similar to the fundamental signal of the desired
output voltage. The other modulating signal is also similar to
the first signal but with a phase shift of 180 electrical degrees.
The advantage of the MPWM over the conventional SPWM is

in the location of the first harmonic. Where the SPWM is

pushing back the harmonics towards the high frequencies by
which the first significant sideband of the output voltage
spectrum is located in the switching frequency sideband,
However the MPWM is able to shift back the first significant
harmonic to a frequency equal to twice of the switching
frequency. This means that the THD of the MPWM is less
than that of the SPWM with the same switching frequency, but
the fundamental component is not too high. This method is
easy to implement and control, but it has some disadvantages
in high switching stresses on the semiconductor devices and
also its effect of the harmonic content on the input side is high
as well.
3- Random pulse width modulation (RPWM):
Random pulse width modulation technique is basically
based on randomizing the frequency of the carrier signal in
order to distribute the concentrated energy of the harmonic
frequency of the inverter output voltage in a narrow high
frequency band. The main purpose and advantage of this
technique is to reduce the energy of the harmonics, which in
turn will reduce the THD of the inverter output voltage.
However, this action will also affect the energy of the
fundamental frequency component, i.e. the amplitude of the
fundamental frequency component will be reduced as well,
which is the main disadvantage of this technique. Also it has a
significant drawback, which is the rapid deterioration of
quality of operation at low values of modulation index.
Moreover, randomizing the carrier frequency adds an extra
switching losses and extra stresses to the semiconductor devices
which in turn lead to add more harmonics to the current signal in
the input side.
This technique can be summarized in three different
strategies as follows [8]:
A) Randomized Switching Frequency, which is also, can be
divided into two ways: the regular and the natural sampling
mode. In which the regular sampling mode is characterized
by randomly changing of the switching intervals from cycle
to cycle by an integer number N in the output frequency.
Whereas the natural sampling method is obtained using
either the classic triangular carrier method or space vector
method. The triangular carrier signal, with which the
reference voltage signal is compared, can be generated with
a randomly varying slope In the case of space vector
RPWM; these are the consecutive increments of the angular
position of the reference voltage vector that are randomized.
B) Randomized Pulse Position; in which the pulses of
switching signals are randomly placed in individual
switching intervals.
C) Random Switching; in this method, randomly fractional
numbers, having uniform probability distribution, are
compared with the desired duty cycle of the switching
signals for individual phases of the inverter.

4- 3rd Harmonic injection PWM (3HPWM):

By injecting the 3rd harmonic to the three-phase sinusoidal
modulating signals, the inverter fundamental frequency
voltage can also be increased without causing over
modulation. In which, the modulating signal is composed of
the fundamental component and the third harmonic
component, making the signal somewhat flattened on the top.
As a result, the peak fundamental component can be higher
than the peak triangular carrier wave which boosts the
fundamental voltage.
The injected third harmonic component will not increase the
harmonic distortion in the output voltage. Although it appears
in each of the inverter terminal voltages, the third-order
harmonic voltage does not exist in the line to line voltage.
This is because the line to line voltage is given by the relation
Vab=Van - Vbn, where the third-order harmonics in Van and Vbn
are of zero sequence with the same magnitude and phase
displacement and thus cancel each other. The main
disadvantage of this technique is that there is no defined
procedure for determining the proper amount of the added
third harmonic component [15].
5- Space vector modulation (SVM)
Space vector modulation for three-leg VSI is based on the
representation of the three phase quantities as vectors in a twodimensional (, ) plane. To make the output current must
always be continuous, and also the input lines must never be
shorted, the voltage source inverter can assume only eight
distinct switching topologies. The desired three phase voltages
at the output of the inverter could be represented by an
equivalent vector U rotating in the counter clock wise
direction. There are four types of SVM [29, 30, 31];
1) The right aligned sequence,
2) The symmetric sequence which has the lowest THD
because of the symmetry and the switching losses are almost
similar to the first one,
3) The alternating zero vector sequence, where the switching
losses for this scheme are to be ideally low as compared to
those of the previous two schemes and the THD is
significantly higher due to the existence of the harmonics at
half of the sampling frequency,
4) The highest current not switched sequence in which the
switching losses are the lowest compared with the others
because it avoids switching the phase carrying the highest
current. However, the sampling period T s is the same in all
of them.
The converter input voltage can be represented by the space
vector U. The space vector U once can take one of the eight
different positions resulting from the permissible
combinations of the conduction states. Vectors U1 to U6 have
fixed modulus of Udc and are phase-shifted by /3. They
are called active vectors and refer to the conduction states of

the power semiconductor switches during which the respective

phases are supplying the DC-link load. While the three upper
or three lower power semiconductor switches are conducting
simultaneously, the supply line is short-circuited. These states
are described by two zero vectors U0 and U7. The zero vectors
are located in the origin of coordinates and they are
represented by the two concentric points. The converter input
PWM voltage space vector would change its position every
/3inside the hexagon if the six active conduction states were
successively forced in the rectifier. The optional position of
the reference vector U* inside the sector can be reached by
providing the symmetrical control pulses represented by the
following switching sequence: U0-U1-U2-U7-U2-U1-U0. In
case when the reference vector U* is moving throughout the
first sector. In the other sectors two next adjacent vectors
should be considered [31].
The Total Harmonic Distortion ratio of the line current and
voltage are equal THDI = 1.6% and THDV = 26.7%
respectively [15]. For the linear modulation the maximal
length of the reference vector U* is equal to U*max = Udc/ 3 .
The space vector modulation corresponds to the sinusoidal
modulation with the additional zero sequence signals.
6- Delta modulation (DM):
Delta modulation technique has the advantage of easy
implementation, continuous converter voltage control, and a
direct control of the line harmonics. However, the DM control
has the drawback of low fundamental output value and
asymmetrical operation. This technique is similar to other
modulation technique, but the inherent self-carrier generating
feature of the DM technique allows simple control process for
varying the output voltage. With the normal delta modulation
technique, in which the carrier signal has equal rising and
falling edges, the output voltage is maximally have the
available voltage. This limitation can be mitigated by
asymmetrical control of the modulator. In this way, the rising
slope is not equal to the falling slope of the estimated wave
and the quantizer threshold levels p and n control the
output voltage. When p > n, the output increases with the
increase of p; and n > p, the output decreases with the
increase of n [10].
The delta modulation technique has recently drawn great
attention as a promising control scheme for static power
converters to achieve fast response [11, 12]. However, the DM
control has the drawback of low fundamental output value and
asymmetrical operation [10, 14] which was overcame by
proposing the rectangular wave DM, which can control the
output harmonics by adjusting its modulator parameters.
Because of its inherent V/f feature and the attenuation of low
order harmonics, the rectangular wave DM is suitable for AC
motor control. However, the inverter output waveform is not
synchronized with the control signal because the duty ratio
modulation depends on the slope of the control signal.

This asynchronous operation introduces a periodic

asymmetry resulting in the generation of sub-harmonics which
will cause unwanted torque pulsations. There are many
approached of DM are proposed so far, such as; conventional
delta modulator, delta modulator with PI control, carrier
synchronized DM, tuned delta modulator and feed forward
delta modulation.
7- Specific harmonic elimination (SHE):
Specific harmonic elimination is based on predefining sets
of switching angles in order to determine locations and widths
of the switching pulses. This type of inverter has shown the
possibility of eliminating certain harmonics in the inverter
output [2, 12, 15].
Essentially, to eliminate the same number of low order
harmonics, PWM-SHE requires the use of 50% less switching
pulse over the conventional carrier modulated SPWM method
[27]. This automatically implies less stress on the switching
device and hence less switching loss. Higher quality inverter
output voltage and current waveform and a smaller filter size
is attainable without the expense of high switching loss.
This technique is a non-carrier based PWM scheme, and it
is based on the fact that conditions of quarter and half wave
symmetry are capable of eliminating even indexed harmonics.
Another key advantage of PWM-SHE switching pattern is the
inverters higher fundamental output voltage component [27].
By extending this concept it has led to consider angles of
switching pulses in the first quarter cycle as variables for
optimization in order to eliminate more harmonics from the
inverter output. The main disadvantage of this method is its
complicated implantation especially in finding the switching
angles [15].
8- Hysteresis-Band Current Control (HBCC)
It is based on calculating the error between the reference
output and the measured output signals. The switching
elements states are changed when the instantaneous calculated
error falls outside a pre-defined hysteresis band in order to
drive the error back within that hysteresis band. Where the
targeted output was the inverter output current, and the early
implementations of hysteresis-band current control switching
scheme were based on a fixed hysteresis band. An adaptive
current controller was developed which uses a variable
hysteresis band. This controller suffered from the stability
problems as the load changes [15].
The sinusoidal hysteresis band was able to limit the
maximum switching frequency and improved both output
current and voltage of the operated inverter. However, this
method requires that the controlled output quantity of the
inverter be integrated either by the load or as a part of the
controller. Thus, sub-harmonics may be present in inverter
outputs. These reasons made the hysteresis band current
control switching scheme not very useful for industrial
applications with low switching frequencies.

The conventional fixed hysteresis-band current control

generates excessive current ripple because modulation
frequency varies within a band. In an adaptive hysteresis-band
method, the band is modulated as a function of system
parameters to maintain the modulation frequency to be nearly
constant. Systematic mathematical analysis has been
presented, and band expressions have been derived as a
function of the load machine and supply parameters for
connected and isolated neutral cases [25].
9- Wavelet modulation (WM):
The seeds of the wavelet theory were planted in the
beginning of 20th century by Alfred Haar. In 1909, he found
an orthogonal system of functions defined on (0, 1), that form
a series converging uniformly to a continuous function f. What
Haar found was the simplest basis of the family of wavelet
bases. Then the rapid progress in the field was made in the
beginning of the 1980s. In the early 1980s, the wavelet
transform was studied theoretically in geophysics and
mathematics by Morlet, Grossman and Meyer [28].
In the late 1980s, links with digital signal processing were
pursued by Daubechies and Mallat, thereby putting wavelets
firmly into the applications domain. From 1990s many
applications are developed by utilizing wavelet transform in
all fields of research. In 2007, Saleh and Rahman developed
the wavelet modulation techniques for AC-DC converters,
which gave a new application for the wavelets. They have
successfully developed and experimentally tested a new type
of inverters that is capable of producing outputs with
significantly improved quality. This new type of inverters is
called the wavelet modulated (WM) inverter [15, 18].
Any continuous time signal can be expanded using sets of
wavelet basis functions. These sets can be generated for every
scaling function at each scale by integer translations. Also a
dual scaling function will exists for the same scaling function,
when these dual functions generate other sets of basis
functions which are required to complete the expansion of any
CT signal. Both of these sets of basis functions are capable of
constructing a multiresolution analysis (MRA) which called
dyadic-type MRA. However all known scaling functions have
basis functions that can only support uniform sampling. In the
case of inverters switching, the uniform sampling is not useful
for switching these inverters. [1, 15, 18, 26]
Alternatively, a non-uniform sampling can be used for
switching the inverters, which require designing a special class
of scaling and dual scaling functions that can construct a MRA
of a non-dyadic type. The inverter function with a nonuniform recurrent sampling reconstruction case means that the
output pulses have a quarter cycle symmetry. This nonuniform recurrent sampling requires designing a unique nondyadic type MRA by using a special unique form of Haar
wavelet function. This function generates a train of nonuniform recurrent pulses used to pulsate the inverter
semiconductor switches matrix. Generating switching pulses

are dilated and shifted versions of the synthesis scaling

function.
Saleh and Rahman has experimentally developed and tested
this new type of inverters that is capable of producing an
inverter output voltage with significantly higher fundamental
frequency component voltage and lower higher harmonic
component. This new type of inverters is called the wavelet
modulated WM inverter. The advantages of this approach are
it is able to produce output voltages and currents with higher
magnitudes of the fundamental component and lower
harmonic contents better than the other types of modulation
techniques. The basis of the wavelet modulation technique lies
in the definition of the scale-based linearly combined scaling
function, which is used to sample the reference-modulating
signal in a non-uniform recurrent manner [15, 26].
In a three phase six-pulse inverter, three referencemodulating signals are used to generate the required switching
pulses. As a consequence, three scaling functions are needed
to sample these three signals. It is to be noted that these three
reference-modulating signals have the same frequency and
magnitude with a phase shift of 2/3 from each other.
Finally, the new WM modulated inverter is mainly based on
constructing three shifted non-dyadic type MRAs to sample
and reconstruct three sinusoidal reference-modulating signals.
[1, 26]
III. CONCLUSION
This paper has presented an analysis of the various state of
art of modulation techniques. An investigation is carried out
on the most important modulation techniques. All of the
investigated techniques have advantages and disadvantages
except the wavelet modulation which have been recently
invented. It has been found that this technique is met with all
measuring factors that are used to calibrate the performance of
any other modulation techniques:
1- The amplitude of the fundamental component is high,
2- The harmonic content in the inverter output is low,
3- The effect of harmonics on the source is low,
4- The switching losses are low,
5- Controllability is easy,
6- Implantation is simple.
On the other hand, all other techniques have shortcoming in
at least one of the aforementioned factors. That is in turn will
reduce the efficiency of that technique.
The three phase wavelet modulated WM inverter has shown
significant capabilities in terms of the quality of the output
voltages and currents. It provided output voltages and currents
with low harmonic content along with high magnitudes of the
fundamental frequency component of the output voltage. In
addition, the performance comparison of the WM and all the
other modulation techniques revealed that the new WM
inverter can out-perform all of them under same operating
conditions.

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