Effects and Compensation of Dead-Time and Minimum Pulse-Width Limitations in Two-Level PWM Voltage Source Inverters

This paper investigates the effect of (voltage source) inverter's non-linearity on the space vector pulse width modulation (PWM) method and the discontinuous PWM methods, DPWM0, DPWM1, and DPWM2. The inverter's non-linearity of dead-time and minimum pulse-width are considered. These non-linearity's impose distortion regions where their effects cannot be properly compensated. The distortion regions are identified for the various PWM methods in space vector diagram format. A method to switch between DPWM methods to avoid the distortion regions while minimizing switching losses is proposed for the middle modulation indexes. At high modulation indexes, a method to modify the DPWM1 switching function is proposed which preserves the fundamental component while taking into consideration the inverter's non-linearity. The proposed methods are experimentally verified and shown to reduce the harmonics in the motor phase currents which would normally be induced due to the inverter non-linear effects. As a result, the proposed method allows for smoother torque production