1. Introduction
One-cycle control (OCC) offers significant advantages in power electronics, primarily due to its ability to reject input voltage disturbances and achieve exceptional dynamic response within a single switching cycle. Therefore, it plays an important role in applications such as DC-DC converters, inverters, and power factor correction [
1,
2,
3]. Due to the high frequency action of the switch, OCC converters exhibit bifurcation and other nonlinear behaviors, similar to converters based on other control methods. These nonlinear behaviors, such as Hopf bifurcation, period-doubling bifurcation, and even chaos, can significantly impact the stability and performance of converters. Therefore, the nonlinear characteristics of converters should be thoroughly analyzed, and an effective method to control the bifurcation and chaotic phenomena needs to be explored.
Over the past few decades, along with the development of nonlinear dynamic theory and analytic procedures, the existence of different dynamic behaviors, such as Hopf bifurcation, sub-harmonic oscillation, and chaos, have been confirmed to appear in converters, and a set of control strategies has been developed to control them. In [
4], a constant on-time one-cycle-controlled boost converter operating in continuous conduction mode was analyzed using the discrete-time model. It was found that Neimark–Sacker bifurcation occurs as the constant on-time value increases. Moreover, based on stability analysis, an additional current loop was developed, extending the stable region. Under certain operating and parameters conditions, it was confirmed that bifurcation and chaotic nonlinear phenomena occur in buck–boost converters [
5]. Based on a time-domain mathematical model of buck converters, a discrete iterative mapping model was established, and the chaotic behaviors of the system were studied [
6]. In [
7], hybrid-scale bifurcation evolutionary phenomena in OCC single-inductor dual-output (SIDO) buck DC–DC converters were investigated, and the underlying mechanism of these hybrid-scale bifurcations was explained in detail. In [
8], one-cycle-controlled boost converters were confirmed to lose stability via a supercritical Hopf bifurcation.
Such bifurcations and other nonlinear behaviors are usually undesirable in power converters. Since they have been detected in power converters, researchers have tried to weaken or completely suppress such bifurcations and other nonlinear behaviors in their harmful state. Generally, feedback and non-feedback control strategies are addressed. Many are widely adopted, including the OGY method (a chaos control method proposed by E. Ott, C. Grelogi, and J. A. Yorke) [
9,
10], occasional proportional feedback (OPF) [
11], and time delay feedback (TDF) [
12,
13]. These feedback methods require measurement of the system variables. In [
14], the bifurcation behavior of boost converters was analyzed, and a segmented pole configuration method based on feedback was proposed to suppress it. Filters are used to improve the stability of the system; however, the addition of filters increases the number of control parameters that need to be determined [
8,
15,
16], thus increasing the computational complexity. Compared with the feedback methods, in non-feedback control methods, such as resonant parametric perturbation [
17], ramp compensation [
18], and weak periodic perturbation [
19], no specific periodic orbit is determined and there is no need to measure system variables.
Recently, in [
20], the energy balance control method (EBC) was confirmed to effectively suppress unstable behaviors, such as Hopf bifurcation, oscillation, and even chaos, and extend the stable parameter domain of the systems. Moreover, a novel OCC with an embedded composite function was proposed in [
21]. By embedding composite function
, the eigenvalue distribution of the system was optimized, thus delaying the emergence of the bifurcation point. This means that the parameter stability domain of the converter is significantly broadened. Here, the sqrt function
was chosen; however, various commonly used functions, such as the logarithmic function and the arc-tangent function, can also be used as the embedded composite function. It is possible that embedding these functions can obtain a wider parameter stability domain.
Based on the exploration of the required embedded function features in [
21], the main contributions of this manuscript are as follows: (1) the arc-tangent function is identified as the optimal embedding function, providing the boost converter with infinite stable parameter domains; and (2) the characteristics of functions that are suitable for embedding are summarized and confirmed: they should be positive, monotonically increasing, and have a zero initial value. Based on the symmetry concept, the control method in this paper is to keep the balance of absorbing and releasing electrical energy in each cycle. This paper is organized as follows:
Section 2 presents the average model of a boost converter.
Section 3 introduces converters using the proposed OCC with embedded logarithmic and arc-tangent functions and analyzes their stability using average models. The nonlinear stability theoretical analysis results are confirmed through calculation, simulation, and experiments in
Section 4 and
Section 5.
Section 6 concludes this article.
2. Average Model of the Boost Converter
This section develops the average model of a boost converter to analyze its stability using the OCC method proposed in [
21], with different embedded composite functions.
The structure of a boost converter is shown in
Figure 1, where
uin and
Uin represent the instantaneous and average values of the input voltage;
iL and
IL represent the instantaneous and average values of the inductor current, respectively;
ic and
Ic represent the instantaneous and average values of the current across the capacitor;
io and
Io represent the instantaneous and average values of the current of the load;
u and
U represent the instantaneous and average values of the output voltage. According to [
21], under CCM, such a boost converter is described as follows:
where
s = 1 denotes that S is in the on-state, and
s = 0 denotes that S is in the off-state [
21].
3. Stability Analysis of the Boost Converter Using the Proposed OCC with Composite Functions
and
Embedded
According to [
21], a composite function can be embedded in the conventional OCC to change the eigenvalue locations of the system.
Figure 2 shows the structure of the proposed OCC with a composite function embedded. With the embedding of a composite function, the control equation of the proposed OCC is written as follows:
where
. This is a dimensionless coefficient that is positive and increases from zero. When this function is embedded, the system can converge on the same equilibrium point as the conventional OCC, as long as
is a positive and strictly increasing function. Therefore,
can be the sqrt function [
21], the logarithmic function, the arc-tangent function, etc.
3.1. Embedding the Logarithmic Function
Here,
is chosen as
. This function is positive and increases from zero. Then, (2) is rewritten as (3):
The average model of (3) is obtained as follows:
And the duty cycle
D is derived as follows:
Replacing s in (1) with
D derived in (5), the average state-space model of the boost converter using OCC with
embedded is derived as follows:
Setting
and
in (6) to zero, the equilibrium point can be obtained as follows:
Then, the Jacobian matrix evaluated at this equilibrium point is obtained as follows:
Substituting (7) into the Jacobian matrix (8) gives
According to det [λI −
J] = 0 and the second-order Padé approximation, the characteristic quasi-polynomial equation can be written as follows:
where
,
, and
.
From (10), it is obvious that . Since in a boost converter, always holds, and since , is obtained, then is established. Therefore, if is obtained, the stability condition of the OCC with embedded can be obtained.
To obtain the condition of
, let f1(
) =
and f2(
) =
. The values of f1 and f2 were plotted against
changes for comparison, and the results are shown in
Figure 3. As illustrated, both f1(
) and f2(
) exhibit monotonically increasing behavior, intersecting at
= 21, which is their sole intersection point. This means that when
< 21, f1(
) < f2(
); otherwise, f1(
) > f2(
).
According to the figure and analysis, with the parameters in
Table 1, if
is satisfied, which is more than 4
, then
is obtained. Compared with the conventional OCC (2
) and the OCC with
embedded (3
), it can be seen that embedding
extends the stable parameter domain further.
3.2. Embedding the Arc-Tangent Function
Here, φ(u) is chosen as
. Then, (2) is rewritten as (11):
Then, the average model of (11) is obtained as follows:
Replacing
s in (1) with
D derived in (13), the average state-space model of the boost converter using OCC with
embedded is derived as follows:
Setting
and
in (14) as zero, the equilibrium point can be obtained as follows:
Then, the Jacobian matrix evaluated at this equilibrium point is obtained as follows:
Substituting (15) into the Jacobian matrix (16) gives
According to det [λI − J] = 0 and the second-order Padé approximation, the characteristic quasi-polynomial equation can be written as follows:
where
.
From (18), it is obvious that . Since in a boost converter, always holds, and when > 0, > 0 can be obtained, then is established. Therefore, if is obtained, the stability condition of OCC with the arc-tangent function embedded can be obtained. Again, the graph method was used to determine the condition .
From
, it can be seen that as long as
is smaller than (5
)
,
will be guaranteed. Let
and
. The values of f1 and f2 were plotted against
changes for comparison, and the results are shown in
Figure 4. As illustrated, both f1(
) and f2(
) exhibited monotonically increasing behavior, with no intersecting points. This means that, regardless of parameter changes, the stability condition of OCC with
embedded is always met, demonstrating an infinite stable parameter domain.
According to the figure and analysis, with the parameters in
Table 1, compared with the conventional OCC (2
) and the OCC with
embedded (3
), it can be seen that embedding
infinitely extends the stable parameter domain.
4. Calculation Verification
Taking
as the variable parameter to verify the results of the above theoretical analysis, bifurcation diagrams of the proposed OCC with different composite functions embedded are shown in
Figure 5.
Figure 5a,b show the bifurcation diagrams of the conventional OCC and the proposed OCC with composite function
embedded [
21]. The results show that with
embedded, the instability point is delayed from 10 V to about 15 V.
Figure 5c shows the bifurcation diagram of the proposed OCC with
embedded. It can be seen that as
varies from 10 to 30 V, the bifurcation diagram of the proposed OCC with
embedded loses its stability when
increases to about 21 V.
Figure 5d shows the bifurcation diagram of the proposed OCC with
embedded. It can be seen that even when
increases to 30 V, the boost converter using the proposed OCC with
embedded remains stable throughout. The results show that compared with
, with
and
embedded, the boost converter with an embedded composite function has a wider parameter stability domain. Moreover, the results show that
is the optimal embedding function for OCC boost converters.
The calculation results indicate that different embedding functions improve the stability of the system in different ways. The comparison results are listed in
Table 2, showing that embedding
can achieve the optimal results, so it can be considered the optimal function.
6. Conclusions
Building upon the foundational work of [
21], this study investigates selected embedding functions, specifically the logarithmic and arc-tangent functions, for enhancing the stability of one-cycle-controlled converters. Through state-space averaging and Jacobian matrix analysis, the stability boundaries and parameter domains were determined. Simulations and experiments consistently validated these theoretical findings. First, during the research process, it was found that for logarithmic functions,
ln(
u+1) rather than
lnu should be used as the embedding function to broaden the parameter stability domain. The results further clarify that the embedding function should be a positive, monotonic function that starts at zero. The analytic results indicate that the stability region of
uref is enlarged to more than
when
is embedded and the stability region of
uref is enlarged to infinity with
. This means that embedding
results in no bifurcation or other nonlinear phenomena as parameters vary. Therefore, the arc-tangent function is the optimal function, providing the boost converter with an infinite stable parameter domain.
While the arc-tangent function is identified as the optimal choice, it is likely not unique. Therefore, future work will focus on generalizing the essential characteristics that define an optimal embedding function to guide the selection of other potential candidates. Furthermore, a comprehensive evaluation of the boost converter’s efficiency under different load conditions will be conducted to further validate the practical efficacy of the proposed method.