Predictive Control of a Flying Capacitor Converter

This paper presents a predictive control strategy for single phase flying capacitor converters. The proposed method allows for the regulation of both the output current and the intermediate flying capacitor voltages, achieving transient dynamics that are superior to those in standard pulse width modulation based strategies. By means of an appropriate choice of the associated cost function, the designer is allowed to tradeoff the load current harmonic content, the capacitor voltage balancing and the total number of commutations in a simple fashion. In addition, the strategy permits the enforcement of an arbitrary output voltage spectrum.