Sensorless control of dual-active-bridge converter with reduced-order proportional-integral observer

When controlling a Dual-Active-Bridge (DAB) DC/DC converter, the high frequency terminal current is usually measured for use in the current feedback controller. In order to measure that current, a wide bandwidth sensor accompanied with high-speed amplifiers are required. Furthermore, a high Analog-to-Digital sampling rate is also necessary for sampling and processing the measured data. To avoid those expensive requirements, this paper proposes an alternative control method for the DAB converter. In the proposed method, the terminal current is estimated by a reduced-order proportional integral observer. A technique is also proposed to reduce the phase drift effect when the voltages at two terminals are not matched. Afterwards, a combined current feedforward-voltage feedback control system is developed to enhance the system dynamics and to regulate the output voltage. This control system needs only the information of the terminal voltages and no current sensor is required. Experimental results show that the observer can estimate the terminal current very quickly with the accuracy of more than 98%. In addition, the output voltage is well regulated with a fluctuation of less than 2.6% and a settling time of less than 6.5 ms in the presence of a 30% load change.