Digital Multi-Loop Control of an LLC Resonant Converter for Electric Vehicle DC Fast Charging

This paper proposes a digital control strategy for LLC resonant converters, specifically intended for EV battery charging applications. Two cascaded control loops, i.e. an external battery voltage loop and an internal battery current loop, are designed and tuned according to analytically derived expressions. Particular attention is reserved to the output current control analysis, due to its extremely non-linear behaviour. The well known seventh-order LLC small-signal model, derived with the extended describing function (EDF) method, is simplified to an equivalent first-order model at the resonance frequency. In these conditions, which are proven to be the most underdamped, the current control loop is tuned taking into account the delays introduced by the digital control implementation. Moreover, the adoption of a look-up table (LUT) in the feed-forward path is proposed to counteract the system non-linearities, ensuring high dynamical performance over the full frequency operating range. Finally, the proposed control strategy and controller design procedure are verified both in simulation and experimentally on a 15 kW LLC converter prototype.