Simplified Model Predictive Control Method for Three-Phase Four-Leg Voltage Source Inverters

A simplified model predictive control method is presented in this paper. This method is based on a future reference voltage vector for a three-phase four-leg voltage source inverter (VSI). Compared with the three-leg VSIs, the four-leg VSI increases the possible switching states from 8 to 16 owing to a fourth leg. Among the possible states, this should be considered in the model predictive control method for selecting an optimal state. The increased number of candidate switching states and the corresponding voltage vectors increase the calculation burden. The proposed technique can preselect 5 among the 16 possible voltage vectors produced by the three-phase four-leg voltage source inverters, based on the position of the future reference voltage vector. The discrete-time model of the future reference voltage vector is built to predict the future movement of the load currents, and its position is used to choose five preselected vectors at every sampling period. As a result, the proposed method can reduce calculation load by decreasing the candidate voltage vectors used in the cost function for the four-leg VSIs, while exhibiting the same performance as the conventional method. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated with simulation and experiment results.