Comparative Study of Conducted Common-Mode EMI in WBG-Enabled DC-Fed Three-Phase Current-Source Inverter

Abstract

In pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) inverters, common-mode (CM) voltage and associated conducted CM electromagnetic interference (EMI) can cause motor bearing failures, ground leakage current, and audio susceptibility issues. When wide bandgap (WBG) devices are used to construct a voltage-source inverter (VSI), the CM EMI issues become more challenging. The current-source inverter (CSI) is an alternative, which produces more sinusoidal output voltage waveforms, making it a promising topology for reducing CM EMI in power converters. However, there is little systematic and comprehensive analysis of CSI’s CM EMI, especially when using WBG devices. The conducted CM EMI generation mechanisms of dc-fed two-level VSIs and CSIs are compared in this article. The analytical derivation and the circuit analysis are performed to identify the CM EMI generation mechanisms in both inverters, including CM voltage sources and the resulting CM current flowing paths. The effects of WBG devices on the CM EMI of both inverters are discussed. New CM EMI equivalent circuits (EQCs) of both inverters are analytically derived to reduce the computational time of full-circuit CM EMI simulation. Different filtering schemes and inverter topology variations’ impacts on CSI’s CM EMI are evaluated using the derived EQC. An effective CM EMI filter is designed to suppress the CSI’s CM EMI to be lower than EMI standards.