Improved Finite-Control-Set Model Predictive Control for Cascaded H-Bridge Inverters

In multilevel cascaded H-bridge (CHB) inverters, the number of voltage vectors generated by the inverter quickly increases with increasing voltage level. However, because the sampling period is short, it is difficult to consider all the vectors as the voltage level increases. This paper proposes a model predictive control algorithm with reduced computational complexity and fast dynamic response for CHB inverters. The proposed method presents a robust approach to interpret a next step as a steady or transient state by comparing an optimal voltage vector at a present step and a reference voltage vector at the next step. During steady state, only an optimal vector at a present step and its adjacent vectors are considered as a candidate-vector subset. On the other hand, this paper defines a new candidate vector subset for the transient state, which consists of more vectors than those in the subset used for the steady state for fast dynamic speed; however, the vectors are less than all the possible vectors generated by the CHB inverter, for calculation simplicity. In conclusion, the proposed method can reduce the computational complexity without significantly deteriorating the dynamic responses.