H-infinity control applied to boost power converters

The controller in a pulse-width-modulation (PWM) power converter has to stabilize the system and guarantee an almost constant output voltage in spite of the perturbations in the input voltage and output load over as large a bandwidth as possible. Boost and flyback converters have a right-half-plane zero (RHPZ) in their transfer function from the duty cycle to the output voltage, which makes it difficult to achieve the aforementioned goals. We propose to design the controller using H-infinity control theory, via the solution of two algebraic Riccati equations. The almost optimal H-infinity controller is of the same order as the converter and has a relatively low de gain. The closed-loop characteristics of a typical low-power boost converter with four different control schemes were compared by computer simulation. The H-infinity control was found to be superior in a wide frequency range, while being outperformed by the others at extremely low frequencies. Good agreement was found between simulation results and experimental measurements.