Predictive Control of Power Converters and Electrical Drives

7.1 Introduction

The matrix converter (MC) is a single-stage power converter, capable of feeding directly a m-phase load from a n-phase source (n × m MC) without energy storage devices [1].

The most relevant features of a MC are:

1. The power circuit is compact.

2. It delivers voltages and currents to the load with high quality and without restriction on the frequency.

3. It can generate sinusoidal input current and operate with unity power factor.

4. It allows power to flow from the source to the load and in the opposite direction. This means it is very suitable for regenerative loads.

These are the characteristics of an ideal converter and this is the reason for the great interest in this topology, which has been intensively studied for approximately three decades, starting with the pioneering work of Venturini and Alesina [2, 3]. This chapter will explain the working principle of the MC and will introduce the application of predictive control to control the waveform of the load and input currents.