A New Nonlinear Controller based on Digital Twins Framework for
Multilevel DC/DC Boost Converter
Abstract
Due to high voltage gain and easy-to-install structure, multilevel DC/DC
boost converter, have become very popular in distributed generation
systems incorporating renewable energy sources. Constant Power Loads
(CPLs), on the other hand, lead to converter instability due to their
highly nonlinear nature. In this regard, the use of advanced control
techniques to stabilize the output voltage of the DC/DC multilevel boost
converters by increasing their robustness to undesirable effects of CPLs
is crucial. This research aims to overcome this problem by using a novel
combination of Nonlinear Terminal Sliding Mode Control (NTSMC) technique
and model-free control based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) for a
DC/DC multilevel boost converter in the presence of a non-ideal CPL.
Moreover, a Digital Twin (DT) of the controller is created to improve
the accuracy of the model implemented on a Digital Signal Processor
(DSP). In the proposed control approach, the NTSMC parameters are the
dynamic controller coefficients that are adaptively created by the Deep
Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG) agent through the online learning
of Actor-Critic Neural Networks (NNs). To validate the effectiveness of
the proposed methodology, software-in-loop (SIL) and hardware-in-loop
(HIL) testing procedures have been brought up. The results obtained
showed that the proposed methodology can provide satisfying outcomes
since DDPG algorithm is tuning the feedback control coefficients.