Research on control characteristics of PWM rectifier with RC-IGBT

PWM rectifiers used in the vehicle power and the distributed power generation have higher requirements on the power density and the reliability. Compared with the traditional IGBT module, the reverse-conducting insulated-gate bipolar transistor (RC-IGBT) of the same package has lower thermal resistance and higher current tolerance. By using the gate of RC-IGBT to control the desaturation characteristic of the diode, the reverse recovery loss can be reduced. In the paper, an improved predictive current control method is studied to improve the output characteristics of the single-phase PWM rectifier with low switching frequency. Then through studying the desaturation control characteristics of the RC-IGBT's diode gate, we have achieved the control strategy of the gate pulse of the four switching devices of the single-phase full bridge circuit. At last, the improved predictive current control algorithm applied to the PWM rectifier of RC-IGBT based on the desaturation characteristic of the diode has been simulated, and tested on a small power platform. The results prove that the desaturation control of the improved predictive current control algorithm can effectively control RC-IGBT and realize the stable output of the PWM rectifier.