An Artificial Neural Network-Based Model Predictive Control for Three-phase Flying Capacitor Multi-Level Inverter

Model predictive control (MPC) has been used widely in power electronics due to its simple concept, fast dynamic response, and good reference tracking. However, it suffers from parametric uncertainties, since it directly relies on the mathematical model of the system to predict the optimal switching states to be used at the next sampling time. As a result, uncertain parameters lead to an ill-designed MPC. Thus, this paper offers a model-free control strategy on the basis of artificial neural networks (ANNs), for mitigating the effects of parameter mismatching while having a little negative impact on the inverter's performance. This method includes two related stages. First, MPC is used as an expert to control the studied converter in order to provide the training data; while, in the second stage, the obtained dataset is utilized to train the proposed ANN which will be used directly to control the inverter without the requirement for the mathematical model of the system. The case study herein is based on a four-level three-cell flying capacitor inverter. In this study, MATLAB/Simulink is used to simulate the performance of the proposed control strategy, taking into account various operating conditions. Afterward, the simulation results are reported in comparison with the conventional MPC scheme, demonstrating the superior performance of the proposed control strategy in terms of getting low total harmonic distortion (THD) and the robustness against parameters mismatch, especially when changes occur in the system parameters.