Design of fast and robust current regulators for high-power drives based on complex state variables

High-power pulsewidth-modulated inverters for medium-voltage applications operate at switching frequencies below 1 kHz to keep the dynamic losses of the power devices at a permitted level. Also, the sampling rate of the digital signal processing system is then low, which introduces considerable signal delays. These have adverse effects on the dynamics of the current control system and introduce undesired cross coupling between the current components i_d and i_q. To overcome this problem, complex state variables are used to derive more accurate models of the machine and the inverter. From these, a novel current controller structure employing single-complex zeros is synthesized. Experimental results demonstrate that high dynamic performance and zero cross coupling is achieved even at very low switching frequency.