Modeling and Simulation of Input Switched AC-DC

SEPIC Converter with PFC Control for Optimized

Operation

Abstract—A new configuration of single phase AC-DC DC signal. Research works on this converter has recognized
SEPIC converter with PFC controller has been designed for its contribution in the overall performance
achieving higher efficiency, power factor with lower THD as improvement[11]–[14]. This proposed work on SEPIC
compared to conventional converters. The proposed bridgeless converter aims to achieve more precise results.
converter provides near unity power factor than conventional
converters. The proposed converter utilizes a single switch with
two diodes at the input side. Conventional converter suffers II. PROPOSED CONVERTER
from lots of demerits such as high THD in input current, low
power factor whereas newly designed converter significantly A. SEPIC Converter
improves these parameters. Despite satisfactory results in open A SEPIC converter is analogous to a Buck-Boost
loop configuration, the PFC controller has been added to converter, except it has favorable circumstances of
obtain more precise results. Results were obtained by using producing output which is not inverted. The proposed
PSIM software.
converter shown in Fig. 1(a) uses series capacitor C1 and C2
Keywords—SEPIC Converter, Power Factor Correction, to couple energy from the input side to the output side of the
Total Harmonic Distortion circuit. Instead of using bridge rectifier in the input side, two
filter capacitors have been added to get distortion less input
current whereas conventional converter uses bridge rectifier
I. INTRODUCTION
to rectify the input signal. The proposed circuit operates in a
Conventional AC-DC converters experience deteriorated total of four modes for both negative and positive half
performances due to distorted signals of input current.
Several research works have been carried out to overcome
this drawback. Traditional improvement methods consist of
using rectifier with filter at the input side. To adapt this
strategy, high valued inductor and capacitor are needed,
which is practically burdensome[1]. Moreover, heat is
generated in bridge rectifiers due to high forward voltage
drop. Though lots of research have been conducted for the
improvement of the power quality of the overall power
system, most of the newly designed configurations are still
suffering from low power factor with more THD in input
current[2]. Proper design of PFC circuit can help in order to
overcome such types of problems.
Active PFC avoids producing large harmonics in input
(a)
current[3]–[5]. Dual switched boost rectifiers are preferable
as they are inexpensive and simple alongside providing
higher efficiency. Ref[6] analyzes the performance of this
type of rectifier, although it suffers from some major
drawbacks. PFC and SMPS circuits which are suitable for
low-to-medium power range consists of front-end bridge
rectifier, added with high frequency dc-dc converters. These
converters can be different types as boost, buck-boost, CUK,
SEPIC, flyback converter etc. Also, many bridgeless
converters has been designed to improve the
performance[7]–[10].
(b)
SEPIC AC-DC converter is a switched mode power Fig. 1 SEPIC Converter (a) Proposed (b) Conventional
supply converter which converts an AC signal to a high level

978-1-5386-5541-2/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

cycles of the sinusoidal input voltage. Although proposed In the ON state of switch S, when positive half cycle of
circuit consists of more components than the conventional the input signal is applied, current flows in two paths. As
circuit, it performs better in all the measured aspects. The shown in Fig. 2(a), the first path starts from the input,
performance have been shown in the simulation part of the flowing via inductor L1 and through the switch S; whereas
paper. in the second path, capacitor C1 and inductor L3 will get
charged. Diode D6 is forward biased when it gets positive
III. PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION half cycle of the input signal in the OFF state of the switch.
During this time, the current passes through two paths as
A. Single Phase Sepic Converter given in Fig. 2(b). One path is from L1 through the RL and
The four stages of operation of the proposed SEPIC returns back to the output via diode D6. The other path of
converter has been shown below: movement is along inductor L3 and the diode D6. In the third
mode of operation, switch S is turned ON amid the negative
cycle of the supply while D5 and D6 operate in non-
conducting mode. Current again streams in two ways, as
appeared in Fig. 2(c). Again, when S is opened during the
negative cycle, the diodes D4, D5 and D6 are forward biased
and current keeps on streaming in two ways as shown in
Fig. 2(d). The signal across the load becomes unidirectional
during both positive and negative cycles of the input supply,
thus AC-DC transformation is accomplished.
B. Ideal Voltage Equation
(a) From the proposed circuit as shown in Fig. 1(a), at the
input stage:
When the switch is ON,

v L1 = v in
(1)
When the switch is OFF,
vL1 = vin − vc1 − vo
(2)

At the output stage:

(b) When the switch is ON,
v L3 = − v c1
(3)
When the switch is OFF,
vL3 = vo
(4)
The final expression of output voltage can be written as,

2DVinmax
VOAV =
π (1− D) (5)
(c)

C. Feedback Control to Improve Power Factor

Power quality of power system is governed by its power

factor. Open loop activity of conventional AC-DC converters
experience low power factor which causes few problems in
the overall electrical network. To solve this issue, the proper
design of the feedback controller is of crucial significance to
enhance the overall performance of the system.
The designed controller of Fig. 3 creates two control
loops to provide the necessary PWM signal to drive the
(d)
switch of the proposed SEPIC converter: inner current loop
Fig. 2 Operational modes of proposed circuit (a) Mode 1 (b) Mode 2 and outer voltage loop.
(c) Mode 3 (d) Mode 4
 Fig. 3 Proposed converter with feedback control to improve power factor and reduce THD

load of 100Ω and switching frequency of 8 KHz, whereas in

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS Table III, for the same switching frequency, the circuit
performances have been observed by varying the loads and
TABLE I. SPECIFICATION OF DESIGN PARAMETERS FOR OPEN LOOP keeping the duty cycle fixed at 50%. The performance
CONTROL
parameters presented in Table II and III are efficiency (η),
Parameter Value power factor (PF), total harmonic distortion (THD) and
Input Voltage (Vi) 220V voltage gain. It is evident from the tables that the proposed
Switching Frequency (Fs) 8kHz circuit performs better than the traditional SEPIC converter
Inductor (L1,L2) 2.8mH
Inductor (L3,L4) 1.8mH
with respect to the measured parameters.
Capacitor (C1, C2) 0.8µF
Input Capacitor (Cin1, Cin2) 5.5µF TABLE III. COMPARISON OF PROPOSED CIRCUIT WITH
CONVENTIONAL CIRCUIT UNDER LOAD VARIATION
Output Capacitor (C0) 220uF
Load Resistor (RL) 100Ω Proposed Circuit Conventional Circuit
Load
η THD Voltage η THD Voltage
(Ω) PF PF
(%) (%) gain (%) (%) gain
50 97 27 .96 1.43 96 41 .91 1.25
TABLE II. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF PROPOSED CIRCUIT FOR DIFFERENT
DUTY CYCLES 70 96 20 .97 1.53 96 47 .91 1.37
90 96 20 .97 1.72 96 43 .91 1.40
Proposed Circuit Conventional Circuit 110 95 21 .97 1.90 96 40 .92 1.42
Duty
η THD Voltage η THD Voltage 130 95 21 .97 2.05 95 41 .92 1.42
Cycle PF PF
(%) (%) gain (%) (%) gain 150 94 21 .97 2.20 94 42 .91 1.54
0.1 89 31 .35 0.3 75 100 .5 .2
0.2 95 48 .71 0.6 90 98 .65 .4 .
0.3 96 39 .88 1.01 94 81 .77 .7
0.4 97 28 .94 1.41 95 56 .86 .9 Comparison for efficiency, power factor, input current
0.5 97 20 .97 1.81 96 41 .9 1.41 THD and voltage gain of the proposed AC-DC SEPIC
0.6 98 16 .98 2.28 95 43 .9 2 converter with conventional SEPIC converter with duty
0.7 97 31 .94 3.3 94 38 .9 2.9
cycle variation is given graphically in Fig. 4 where it is clear
0.8 97 31 .86 4.9 91 30 .89 4.3
0.9 92 33 .74 6.9 80 43 .87 7.27
that proposed circuit performs better than the conventional
circuit. In Fig. 4(c) and 4(d) value of THD and voltage gain
go up after 80% of duty cycle due to the enhancement mode
The simulation of the conventional and proposed
of MOSFET switch. Comparison between efficiency, input
SEPIC AC-DC converter was performed using PSIM 9.1
current THD, power factor and voltage gain of the proposed
environment. Table I contains the design parameters used AC-DC SEPIC converter with conventional SEPIC converter
for simulation. In Table II, performance outcome of both with load variation is given in Fig. 5. Variation of loads does
conventional and proposed single phase AC-DC SEPIC not deteriorate the circuit’s performance which makes the
converter are shown by varying duty cycle for the constant proposed converter more effective.
 (a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 4 Graphical representation of efficiency (a), power factor (b), input current THD (c) and voltage gain (d) for the Proposed AC-DC SEPIC converter
with conventional SEPIC Converter under duty cycle variation.

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 5 Graphical representation of efficiency (a), power factor (b), input current THD (c) and voltage gain (d) for the proposed AC-DC SEPIC converter
with conventional SEPIC converter under load (Ω) variation.
 The input-output waveforms of the proposed input
switched SEPIC converter in open loop is given in Fig. 6.

(a) Fig. 7 PFC controlled waveforms of the input voltage and current of Fig. 3.

TABLE V. COMPARISON BETWEEN THE CONVENTIONAL AND PROPOSED

AC-DC CONVERTER FOR BOTH WITHOUT FEEDBACK AND WITH
FEEDBACK CONTROL
Proposed
Proposed
Conventional SEPIC
Performance SEPIC
SEPIC Converter
Parameters Converter with
Converter without
Feedback
Feedback
(b) Input Current
.77 .34 .15
THD
Input Power
.8 .89 .99
Factor

Table V summarizes the outcome of the proposed

converter and conventional converter both with and without
feedback controller. The input power factor of conventional
SEPIC is .8 alongside input current distortion of 0.77. In the
proposed SEPIC converter without PFC, the THD falls to
0.34 and the power factor improves to 0.9. On the other
hand, the THD reduces drastically to .15 after adding
(c)
feedback controller. Also, the power factor remains high at
Fig. 6 Waveforms of the proposed input switched AC-DC SEPIC 0.99. So, the proposed converter with feedback gives 55%
converter. (a) Input voltage, (b) Input current and (c) Output voltage. less THD than without feedback. So, the overall
performance of the converter is improved.
In open loop operation the simulation waveform of the
input current contains some harmonic due to utility voltage
which may be caused by the effect of load variation on the V. CONCLUSION
generator. To reduce the harmonic contamination in the
input current feedback controller is used. A single phase input switched AC-DC SEPIC converter
with PFC controller has been designed aiming towards
Simulation of circuit of Fig. 3 has been done for the higher efficiency. The aim has been achieved and verified via
proposed converter with feedback controller. The parameters simulation work. Comparison has been made amongst
of the proposed circuit are given in Table IV. The PFC conventional SEPIC converter, proposed SEPIC converter
controller is designed to obtain an average output voltage of with and without PFC circuit. The results show optimized
282 Vdc. The simulation results of the designed controller as performance operation for the converter with feedback. The
compared to conventional circuits is given in Table V. power factor is almost near unity and the total harmonic
Typical input-output waveform of the proposed controller is distortion is within prescribed IEEE limit. In future, the
shown in Fig. 7. proposed SEPIC converter’s performance can be further
evaluated through hardware implementations alongside
TABLE IV. PARAMETER TABLE FOR CLOSE LOOP CONTROLLER
home appliance and industrial applications.

Parameters Value REFERENCES

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