IJBSTR RESEARCH PAPER VOL-1[ISSUE 5] MAY 2013

ISSN- 2320-6020

Performance Analysis of three phase SPWM Inverter

Vinod Kr Singh Patel and A. K. Pandey
ABSTRACT: This paper deals with study of a Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulated Inverter and all the parameters used to reduce the
harmonics and give the good efficiency of the inverter. The paper will be commenced by a basic understanding of the circuitry of the
SPWM Inverter, the components used in its design and the reason for choosing such components in this circuitry. Generally, only
single phase SPWM inverters are used industrially, and certain instabilities have been found in their operation. With improper
selection of system parameters, the inverter suffers different type of instabilities and many types of harmonics. Our attempt will be to
observe the same for three phase SPWM inverter and analyze its parameters used to get a pure sinusoidal output waveform and fewer
harmonic in its output current and voltage waveform. It will be attempted to simulate a model circuit on any simulating software e.g.
MATLAB and analyze the output waveforms for various values of the elements used in the circuit and hence observe the waveform
distortion.
KEYWORDS: SPWM, three phase inverter, total harmonic distortion.

1.

Introduction

What if we cannot use the stored power in a battery when we

dont have power supply. Since the energy stored in a battery
is in dc form so to use this stored power in battery we need to
convert this dc form of energy to ac form. So here comes the
concept of power inverters. The devices which can convert
electrical energy of DC form into AC form is known as power
inverters. They come in all sizes and shapes, from a high
power rating to a very low power rating, from low power
functions like powering a car radio to that of backing up a
building in case of power outage. Inverters can come in many
different varieties, differing in power, efficiency, price and
purpose. The purpose of a DC/AC power inverter is typically
to take DC power supplied by a battery, such as a 12 volt car
battery, and transform it into a 120 volt AC power source
operating at 60 Hz, emulating the power available at an
ordinary household electrical outlet.
DC-AC inverters have been widely used in industrial
applications such as uninterruptible power supplies, static
frequency changes and AC motor drives. Recently, the
inverters are also playing important roles in renewable energy
applications as they are used to link a photovoltaic or wind
system to a power grid. Like DC-DC converters, the DC-AC
inverters usually operate in a pulse width modulated (PWM)
way and switch between a few different circuit topologies,
which means that the inverter is a nonlinear, specifically
piecewise smooth system. In addition, the control strategies
used in the inverters are also similar to those in DC-DC
converters. For instance, current-mode control and voltagemode control are usually employed in practical applications.
vinod Kr Singh Patel and A.K.Pandey
DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
M.M.M. ENGINEERING COLLEGE, GORAKHPUR (U.P.)
vinod.akg121@gmail.com, akp1234@gmail.com
RESEARCH SCHOLAR (ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, M.M.M.
ENGINEERING COLLEGE)

In the last decade, studies of complex behavior in switching

power converters have gained increasingly more attention
from both the academic community and industry. Various
kinds of nonlinear phenomena, such as bifurcation, chaos,
border collision and coexisting attractors, have been revealed.
Previous work has mainly focused on DC power supply
systems including DC-DC converters and AC-DC power
factor correction (PFC) converters.
2.

Pulse Width Modulation control

The Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) is a technique which is

characterized by the generation of constant amplitude pulse by
modulating the pulse duration by modulating the duty cycle.
Analog PWM control requires the generation of both reference
and carrier signals that are feed into the comparator and based
on some logical output, the final output is generated. The
reference signal is the desired signal output maybe sinusoidal
or square wave, while the carrier signal is either a sawtooth or
triangular wave at a frequency significantly greater than the
reference [1, 2].
The advantages of PWM control are:
1. No additional components are required with this method.
2. Lower order harmonics are eliminated or minimised along
with its output voltage control. Hence, the filtering
requirements are minimised since higher order harmonics can
be filtered easily.
Different schemes of pulse-width modulation:
1. Single-pulse modulation
2. Multi-pulse modulation
3. Sinusoidal-pulse modulation
2.1 Single Pulse Width Modulation: In this modulation there
is an only one output pulse per half cycle. The output is

ijbstr.org

IJBSTR RESEARCH PAPER VOL-1[ISSUE 5] MAY 2013

ISSN- 2320-6020

changed by varying the width of the pulses. The gating signals

are generated by comparing a rectangular reference with a
triangular reference. The frequency of the two signals is nearly
equal.

Fig1: Single Pulse Width Modulation

The rms ac output voltage

Where
=duty cycle=

Modulation Index (MI) =

Fig2: Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation

Where Vr = Reverence signal voltage

Vc = Carrier signal voltage
By varying the control signal amplitude Vr from 0 to Vc the
pulse width ton can be modified from 0 secs to T/2 secs and
the rms output voltage Vo from 0 to Vs.
2.2 Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation: In this modulation
technique are multiple numbers of Output pulse per half cycle
and pulses are of different width. The width of each pulse is
varying in proportion to the amplitude of a sine wave
evaluated at the center of the same pulse. The gating signals
are generated by comparing a sinusoidal reference with a high
frequency triangular signal [1,5].
The rms ac output voltage

Where p=number of pulses and = pulse width

2.3 Features for comparing various PWM Techniques:

Switching Losses
Utilization of Dc power supply that is to deliver a
higher output voltage with the same DC supply.
Linearity in voltage and current control.
Harmonics contents in the voltage and current.
3. Three Phase Inverters:
Three phase inverters are generally used for high power
applications. Three single phase half bridge inverters are to be
connected in parallel to form a three phase inverter.
The inverter is fed by a fixed dc voltage and has three
phase-legs each comprising two transistors and two diodes.
With SPWM control, the controllable switches of the inverter
are controlled by comparison of a sinusoidal control signal and
a triangular switching signal. The sinusoidal control waveform
determines the desired fundamental frequency of the inverter
output, while the triangular waveform decides the switching
frequency of the inverter. The ratio of the frequencies of the
triangle wave to the sinusoid is referred to as the modulation
frequency ratio [2, 4].

ijbstr.org

IJBSTR RESEARCH PAPER VOL-1[ISSUE 5] MAY 2013

ISSN- 2320-6020

Fig4: Square Wave Inverter Output

3.1.2. Modified Square Wave Inverter: A modified sine
wave inverter actually has a waveform More like a square
wave, but with an extra step or so. Because the modified sine
wave is noisier and rougher than a pure sine wave, clocks and
timers may run faster or not work at all. A modified sine wave
inverter will work fine with most equipment, although the
efficiency or power will be reduced with some. But with most
of the household appliances it works well.

Fig5: Modified Square Wave Inverter Output

3.1.3 True Sine Wave Inverter: This type of inverter
provides output voltage waveform which is very similar to the
voltage waveform that is received from the Grid. The sine
wave has very little harmonic distortion resulting in a very
clean supply and makes it ideal for running electronic
systems such as computers, digital fx racks and other sensitive
equipment without causing problems or noise. Things like
mains battery chargers also run better on pure sine wave
converters.

Fig 3: Basic Circuitry of a three phase inverter

3.1 Inverter Types:

There are generally three types of inverter for general purpose.
Square Wave Inverter
Modified Square Wave Inverter
True Sine Wave Inverter
3.1.1. Square Wave Inverter: This is the basic type of
inverter. Its output is a alternating square wave. The harmonic
content in this wave is very large. This inverter is not efficient
and can give Serious damage to some of the electronic
equipment. But due to low cost, it has some limited number of
applications in household appliances.

Fig6: True Sine Wave Inverter

Benefits of using True Sine Wave Inverter:
Most of the electrical and electronic equipments are
designed for the sine wave.

ijbstr.org

IJBSTR RESEARCH PAPER VOL-1[ISSUE 5] MAY 2013

ISSN- 2320-6020

Some appliances such as variable motor, refrigerator,

microwave will not be able to provide Rated output
without sine wave.
Electronic clocks are designed for the sine wave.
Harmonic content is less.

4. SIMULATION RESULTS
With the help of the designed circuit parameters,the MATLAB
simulation is done and results arepresented here. The
waveforms of theline voltage are shown in Fig.6. It can beseen
that the phasor voltages are displaced by 120.The stator
current waveforms are shown in Fig 7.They are quasi
sinusoidal in shape and displaced by120. The waveforms of
THD analysis of voltage and current are shown in fig-7.

Fig8: Subsystem of SPWM generator

Fig7: SPWM BASED INVERTER

Fig9: switching signal of SPWM generator

ijbstr.org

IJBSTR RESEARCH PAPER VOL-1[ISSUE 5] MAY 2013

ISSN- 2320-6020

Fig12: Line voltage Vca

Fig10: Line voltage Vab

Fig13: phase current Ia

Fig11: Line voltage Vbc

ijbstr.org

10

IJBSTR RESEARCH PAPER VOL-1[ISSUE 5] MAY 2013

ISSN- 2320-6020

Fig16:THD Analysis of Line voltage Vab

Fig14: phase current Ib

Fig17: THD Analysis of phase current Ia

Fig15: phase current Ic

ijbstr.org

11

IJBSTR RESEARCH PAPER VOL-1[ISSUE 5] MAY 2013

ISSN- 2320-6020

5. Conclusion
This paper deals with the analysis of Three Phase Sinusoidal
Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM)-VSI. It includes simple
SPWM-VSI. The Simulink model for simple inverter has been
simulated in MATLAB.It was found that for Simulation, the
output current and voltage waveforms of the inverter were of
the desired sinusoidal nature with expected amplitude and
frequency. For the same simulation, the unfiltered voltage and
IGBT/Diode current waveforms were of similar nature. In this
paper we deal with the THD analysis of voltage and current
and obtained THD 68.64% in voltage and 94.03% in current.
6. REFERENCES
[1].M. Depenbrock, Pulse width control of a three-phase
inverter with non-sinusoidal phase voltage of a three-phase
PWM inverter, Proc. IEEE Int. semiconductor Power
Conversion Conf., Orlando, Florida, USA, pp. 399-403, 1977.
[2].A.M. Hava, Carrier based PWM-VSI drives in the over
modulation region, PhD Thesis, University of WisconsinMedison, 1998.
[3]. J.A. Houdsworth and D.A. Grant, The use of harmonic
distortion to increase output voltage of a three-phase PWM
inverter, IEEE Trans. Industry Appl., vol. IA-20, pp. 11241228, Sept./Oct. 1984.

[4]. Maswood. Ali.I & Al-Ammar. Essam "Analysis of a

PWM Voltage Source Inverter with PIController under Nonideal
conditions"
International
Power
Engineering
Conference-IPEC, 2010.
[5]. Lin.W.Song & Huang.I.Bau Harmonic Reduction in
Inverters by Use of Sinusoidal Pulse WidthModulation IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Electronics - IEEE TRANS IND
ELECTRON , vol.IECI-27, no. 3, pp. 201-207, 1980.

ijbstr.org

12