A Quasi Z-Source (qZS) network has been utilized in a B4 inverter topology to provide voltage boosting effect by turning on the upper and lower switches simultaneously which is known as zero shoot-through states. However, the design of a qZS B4 inverter is not as straightforward as adding a qZS LC impedance network to the front-end of a B4 inverter. This is because there are no zero vectors available in a B4 inverter topology to insert the shoot through zero states, as in the case of a B6 inverter. This paper proposes a new Space Vector Modulation (SVM) technique for a qZS B4 inverter. Additional zero vectors have been appropriately added and distributed in the proposed SVM to avoid altering the existing volt-sec per switching cycle for the existing active vectors. The voltage vectors switching placement is carefully designed in order to enable the voltage boosting effect for this topology without altering the initial output voltage. In addition, an approach to compensate the DC-link voltage ripple has also been taken into consideration in its initial calculation to achieve balanced output voltage. The performance of the proposed modulation technique is verified using MATLAB/Simulink. It is shown that by using the proposed modulation technique, there is an overall improvement on the line to line output voltage where by it is able to produce balanced output voltages for the three-phase loads with or without boosting effect. � 2020, Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved.

Until recently, there has been little interest put in assessing the impact of foreign currency derivatives on the variation of exchange rate exposure in emerging market. Furthermore, greater economic openness coupled with relatively low intensity of hedging among ASEAN firms motivated us to investigate the relevance impact of foreign currency derivatives (FCD) to firm value under the context of small open economies of ASEAN-4. The study involves 120 non-financial listed corporations from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore from January 1993 to September 2015. The level of exposure is assessed at aggregate level using Random Effects GLS specification. Several interesting findings are found in this study. First, USD remains the major source of exposure of ASEAN-4 firms. Second, there is no significant influence of the FCD usage to the level of exposure for overall period, suggesting that FCD is not suitable to mitigate long term (operational) exposure. Third, in relation to time varying exposure, there is a noticeable impact of FCD to the level of exposure of Indonesian and Malaysian firms in the middle of the Asian Financial Crisis 1997 and to a lesser extent during the Global Financial Crisis 2008. On the other hand, Singaporean and Thailand firms show mixed findings, suggesting that sample firms in these two countries might have concentrated on other forms of hedging such as operational and natural hedging, whereby the firms are considered resourceful and well diversified. � 2017 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.