Design and Implementation of a Bipolar-Unipolar Switched Boundary Current Mode (BCM) Control GaN-Based Single-Phase Inverter

This paper presents the design and implementation of a boundary current mode (BCM) modulated GaN-based single phase inverter using a combination of bipolar and unipolar switching. Both unipolar and bipolar BCM-switched full bridge inverters are explored in detail in the context of efficiency, output current distortion and leakage current. Although the unipolar switched BCM inverter results in a higher efficiency in comparison to the bipolar switched inverter, it leads to a higher output current distortion at the low frequency zero crossing. On the other hand, the bipolar switched BCM inverter yields a low leakage current and reduced output current distortion, but exhibits lower efficiency. To overcome the low frequency zero crossing current distortion while maintaining a high efficiency, a combination of bipolar and unipolar switching in a BCM inverter is proposed. An experimental prototype has been built to validate the proposed control technique and modulation scheme. The proposed approach achieves a 2% efficiency improvement in comparison to the standard bipolar switched BCM inverter and a THD of 1.15%.