Optimal Switching Pattern for PWM AC-AC Converters Using Bee Colony Optimization

Abstract

This paper proposes a harmonic reduction approach for a pulse width modulation (PWM) AC-AC converters using Bee Colony Optimization (BCO). The optimal switching angles are provided by BCO to minimize harmonic distortions. The sequences of the PWM switching angles are considered as a technical constraint. In this paper, simulation results from various optimization techniques including BCO, Genetic Algorithm (GA), and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) are compared. The test results indicate that BCO can provide a better solution than the others in terms of power quality and power factor improvement. Lastly, experiments on a 200W AC-AC converter confirm the performance of the proposed switching pattern in reducing harmonic distortions of the output waveform.

Asymmetrical PWM for Harmonics Reduction and Power Factor Improvement in PWM AC Choppers Using Bee Colony Optimization

“…Table III shows the simulated results of various techniques: the conventional PWM, BCO SPWM [18] and the proposed APWM techniques at an output voltage of 160 V rms . The results show that the performance of proposed APWM technique in terms of the THD ii , THD io , THD vo and PF i is better than that of the other techniques.…”

“…2(b). These are obtained with various heuristic approaches including GA, PSO, ANN [7]- [14] and BCO [18] for the improvement of the THD o and the PF i . However, these techniques only meet the optimal PWM switching angles in the region 0-p/2.…”

“…Fig. 4 shows the waveforms of the output voltage and load current, and the harmonic spectrum of the output voltage of (a) the conventional PWM technique, (b) the BCO SPWM technique [18] and (c) the proposed APWM technique. As can be seen in Fig.…”

“…However, in these papers, the solution of the switching angle is obtained in the quarter cycle 0-p/2, which may lead to a suboptimal solution. The authors of [18] applied BCO to find the optimal switching angles in the region between 0-p/2 to improve the THD vo This paper proposes an optimal switching strategy based on BCO for PWM AC choppers. In this approach, BCO is adopted to obtain the optimal switching angles of the PWM pattern by considering the region between 0-p.…”