This paper proposes a novel control strategy for three-level neutral-point-clamped (NPC) power converter. The proposed control scheme consists of three control loops, i.e., instantaneous power tracking control loop, voltage regulation loop and voltage balancing loop. First, in the power tracking control loop, a set of adaptive sliding mode controllers are established to drive the active and reactive power tracking their desired values via radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) technology. In the voltage regulation loop, an efficient but simple adaptive controller is designed to regulate dc-link output voltage where the load is considered as an external disturbance. Moreover, a composite controller is developed in the voltage balancing loop to ensure imbalance voltages between two dc-link capacitors close to zero, in which a reduced-order observer is used to estimate sinusoidal disturbance improving the converter performance. The effectiveness and superiority of the proposed control strategy for the NPC power converter are compared with other control scheme through experimental results.

In this article, a nonlinear high-gain observer (NHGO)-based second-order sliding mode (SOSM) control strategy is proposed for the three-phase three-level neutral-point-clamped (NPC) converter. This controller applies the advanced SOSM algorithm both in the voltage regulation loop and in the power tracking loop, which provides a fast dynamic for the dc-link voltage, and also assures a good steady-state behavior for the NPC converter. Additionally, an NHGO technique is implemented in the voltage regulator combining with the SOSM algorithm. The conventional observer-based controllers suffer from the destructive effects of measurement noise, and it can only be addressed by diminishing the observer gain, which sacrifices the observer property. The NHGO technique adopts a time varying gain, that is, high gain in transient while low gain in steady state, which minimizes the adverse influence of measurement noise. The tuning method of the proposed NHGO-based SOSM controller is given to simplify the implementation process. Finally, the simulation and experimental results of the proposed control scheme for the NPC converter are given and compared with the conventional PI controller as well as the well-known linear extended state observer-based control method, which validates the feasibility and superiority of the proposed controller.

In this paper, the problems of stability analysis and delay control for switched positive linear systems (SPLSs) are studied by using average dwell time (ADT) switching. By developing a new class of multiple piecewise-continuous linear copositive Lyapunov function (MPLCLF) approach, an improved stability condition for SPLSs is obtained, which can obtain a tighter bound on the ADT guaranteeing the stability. The obtained stability condition covers the existing results on stability analysis for SPLSs, since the multiple liner copositive Lyapunov function (MLCLF) used in the literature can be viewed as a special case of our proposed MPLCLF, and our result can obtain a tighter bound of ADT. Then, a more efficient controller design method over the existing ones is also established for SPLSs with switching delay to guarantee the underlying system to be exponentially stable. To illustrate the advantages of our proposed results, two numerical examples are finally given.

This paper proposes an adaptive optimal control scheme to minimize the effect of disturbances and uncertainties of permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). In the speed regulation loop, an adaptive speed controller is designed, which not only regulates the speed perfectly but also is robust against wide range variation of parameters and external disturbance of PMSM. Unlike the traditional speed controller, the proposed controller includes an adaptive law to compensate the distorted model parameters and disturbances in real-time, enhancing speed performance. The stability of the proposed speed controller is fully proven by using Lyapunov theory. Meanwhile, a PI-type optimal current controller is established in the inner control loop to achieve the current tracking and limitation. By easily selecting appropriate performance indexes, the proposed controller can balance between control input magnitude and current tracking error. Finally, the validity of the proposed control scheme is verified through simulations and experiments. For a comparative study, four different control strategies, that is, the proposed control, super twisting sliding mode control, PI control and disturbance observer-based control, are carried out to demonstrate the superiority of the proposal.