Design, Simulation and Comparison of Three-phase
Symmetrical Hybrid Sinusoidal PWM fed Inverter
with Different PWM Techniques
Mohiuddin Mahbub
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Brac University
Dhaka, Bangladesh
mahbubrafi011@gmail.com
Mohammad Ali Hossain
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Brac University
Dhaka, Bangladesh
ali.hossain.009@gmail.com
Abstract—PWM technique can reduce switching and
harmonic losses of the inverter. Hybrid PWM inverter utilizes
half of the switches to operate at low-frequency signal and the
other half of the switches to operate at high-frequency signal to
reduce switching loss. But switching loss and heat dissipation
among switches are uneven which reduces system reliability.
Three-phase symmetrical hybrid sinusoidal PWM inverter is
proposed where all switches operate at low and high-frequency
signals alternatively which removes unequal switching loss and
heat dissipation between switches. Switching loss, heat
dissipation and total harmonic distortion of SHSPWM inverter
don’t vary from HPWM. The SHSPWM inverter is simulated
without and with a pie filter in MATLAB/Simulink software to
understand performance differences. SHSPWM performance is
compared with Sinusoidal PWM, Sixty-Degree PWM and
Trapezoidal PWM. The analysis was done by varying
modulation index and carrier frequency to see inverter output
variation.
Keywords—Three phase inverter, THD, Symmetrical Hybrid
Sinusoidal PWM, SPWM, TPWM, SDPWM
I. INTRODUCTION
Inverters are used widely in household and industrial
applications. There are semiconductor switches used in the
inverter to convert dc signal to ac signal by turning the
switches on and off via pulse width modulation (PWM)
techniques. When DC is converted to AC, it contains some
harmonic content, which affects the performance. The
performance parameter of an inverter is total harmonic
distortion (THD), distortion factor, lowest-order harmonic
(LOH), etc. The THD measurement process shows the
closeness between a waveform and its fundamental
component. Efficiency, power factor, etc. of a system can be
understood from THD [1-2]. Lower THD value of an inverter
output means better efficiency, high power factor, etc.
Therefore, THD plays an important role in power electronic
systems.
One of the most important types of power loss in switching
devices are switching loss. Switching loss is proportional to
the switching frequency. For low switching frequency,
switching loss is negligible, but for the high switching
frequency, switching loss increases significantly [3-4]. Even
though the PWM techniques create better output wave quality
but their switching loss is also higher. In the Hybrid PWM
method [5], half of the switches are driven at high switching
frequency PWM signals for high-quality output, and the other
half are operated at low switching frequency PWM signals to
reduce switching losses. Even though switching losses are
nearly halved, the HPWM technique reduces system
reliability due to uneven heat dissipation. Symmetrical hybrid
sine PWM for a full bridge inverter has been implemented in
recent years [6-7].
In this paper, a three-phase symmetrical hybrid sinusoidal
PWM (SHSPWM) technique fed inverter is proposed to
reduce switching losses with equally balanced switch heat
dissipation, good harmonic performance similar to HPWM,
and better system reliability than HPWM. This SHSPWM
technique fed inverter is simulated using MATLAB/Simulink
software. To create a sinusoidal output and reduce harmonic
distortion, a pie filter [8] is added in simulation. SHSPWM
method performance is analyzed by varying modulation index
and carrier frequency to see the variation in the inverter output
characteristics like voltage THD%, current THD%, etc. Also,
SHSPWM technique fed inverter performance is compared
with three popular PWM techniques like Sinusoidal PWM
(SPWM), Sixty-Degree PWM (SDPWM) and Trapezoidal
PWM (TPWM). All mentioned PWM techniques data taken
for both without and with a pie filter added to inverter
condition using software simulation and presented in a tabular
format. Fig. 1 shows a general model of a three-phase inverter.
Fig. 1. Three-phase inverter model [9].
II. PWM TECHNIQUES
A. Symmetrical Hybrid Sinusoidal PWM (SHSPWM)
Technique:
PWM techniques use a higher frequency to operate all
switches than output frequency, which creates higher
switching harmonics. These harmonics are easier to filter and
the filter cost is also low. However, the HPWM technique is
widely used to reduce switching loss. The disadvantage of the
HPWM is that the switching loss of all switches are not equal
because they run at different switching frequencies. Due to
high and low switching frequencies, heat dissipation in the
switches is not the same as well which reduces the reliability
of the system. The SHSPWM technique is the new innovative
alternative of the HPWM technique, which utilizes different
switching frequencies effectively [6-7]. The SHSPWM
technique uses low and high-frequency switching signals
alternatively to turn on-off inverter switch and applies this
frequency combination to all the switches of the inverter. Due
to this frequency combination, switching loss, heat
dissipation, and THD of SHSPWM inverter are the same as
2nd International Conference on Robotics,Electrical and Signal Processing Techniques (ICREST'21)
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