A Comparative Study of Three Switching Patterns Used in SV-PWM Control of a Matrix Converter

AC-AC power converters are becoming essential in most of modern power systems and industrial applications. This conversion is usually done using a traditional converter which consists of a rectifier and an inverter separated by a storage component. During the last two decades, matrix converters gained the researchers attention as an alternative to traditional converters thanks to the advantages they offer. In fact, the absence of the storage component makes the converter more compact and more reliable; two advantages highly required in renewable energy applications such as wind generating systems. Furthermore, the matrix converter provides sinusoidal input and output waveforms, with minimal higher order harmonics; it has inherent bi-directional energy flow capability and operates with unity power factor. In this paper, different modulation techniques of matrix converters are presented with a special interest in the Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SV-PWM) that is studied in detail and simulated using Matlab/Simulink. Three different switching sequences are simulated and results are compared in terms of number of commutation per modulation period and total harmonic distortion (TDH) improvements.