Fractional-Order Model-Free Predictive Control for Voltage Source Inverters

Currently, a two-level voltage source inverter (2L-VSI) is regarded as the cornerstone of modern industrial applications. However, the control of VSIs is a challenging task due to their nonlinear and time-varying nature. This paper proposes employing the fractional-order controller (FOC) to improve the performance of model-free predictive control (MFPC) of the 2L-VSI voltage control in uninterruptible power supply (UPS) applications. In the conventional MFPC based on the ultra-local model (ULM), the unknown variable that includes all the system disturbances is estimated using algebraic identification, which is insufficient to improve the prediction accuracy in the predictive control. The proposed FO-MFPC uses fractional-order proportional-integral control (FOPI) to estimate the unknown function associated with the MFPC. To get the best performance from the FOPI, its parameters are optimally designed using the grey wolf optimization (GWO) approach. The number of iterations of the GWO is 100, while the grey wolf's number is 20. The proposed GWO algorithm achieves a small fitness function value of approximately 0.156. In addition, the GWO algorithm nearly finds the optimal parameters after 80 iterations for the defined objective function. The performance of the proposed FO-MFPC controller is compared to that of conventional MFPC for the three loading cases and conditions. Using MATLAB simulations, the simulation results indicated the superiority of the proposed FO-MFPC controller over the conventional MFPC in steady state and transient responses. Moreover, the total harmonic distortion (THD) of the output voltage at different sampling times proves the excellent quality of the output voltage with the proposed FO-MFPC controller over the conventional MFPC controller. The results confirm the robustness of the two control systems against parameter mismatches. Additionally, using the TMS320F28379D kit, the experimental verification of the proposed FO-MFPC control strategy is implemented for 2L-VSI on the basis of the Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulator, demonstrating the applicability and effective performance of our proposed control strategy under realistic circumstances.