Power factor improvement of an AC-DC converter via appropriate sPWM technique

The power control of a DC load can be achieved via an AC-DC converter consisting of a rectifier bridge and a switching element operating by sPWM technique. The use of such a converter causes a lot of high harmonics at the AC side, which reduce the power factor and distort the grid voltage. Using passive filter in the converter input to avoid the high harmonics consequences the power factor decrease. To improve the power factor an appropriate sPWM operation of the switching element is proposed in this paper. The system behavior is studied through simulation and experimental investigation. The power factor correction is verified.