The dead time necessary to prevent the short circuit of the power
supply in pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) voltage inverters results in output
voltage errors. Although individually small, when accumulated over an
operating cycle, the voltage errors are sufficient to distort the
applied PWM signal. This paper presents a method to correct for the
dead-time errors. The pulse-based dead-time compensator (PBDTC) is less
hardware- and software-intensive than other dead-time compensation
methods providing a low-cost solution. The pulse-based technique is
developed by analyzing the effects of dead time on a pulse-by-pulse
basis and correcting each pulse accordingly. The technique is evaluated
through simulation and experimental results. Other compensation methods
are evaluated, and the results compared with the pulse-based technique.
This comparison indicates previous methods can produce magnitude and
phase errors in the applied terminal voltage, whereas the proposed
method compensates for the dead time without significant magnitude and
phase errors in the terminal voltage of PWM voltage source inverters