An adaptive passivity-based controller for a unity power factor rectifier

We develop a passivity-based control scheme for the feedback regulation of a class of switched power converters commonly addressed as power factor pre-compensators. In such applications, aside from load voltage regulation to a prespecified constant level, a vital additional control objective consists of keeping the input power factor close to unity. By forcing the converter input current to follow a sinusoidal reference signal which is in phase with the supplied voltage, one may approximately satisfy both control objectives within a single power stage. A further complication in our design is to consider the output load, usually modeled by a resistance as an unknown. Experimental results are furnished for assessing the performance of the proposed feedback control law.