Cascaded Multilevel Inverters Using Proposed Series Sub-multilevel Basic Blocks with Reduced Switching Devices

Abstract

In this paper, a novel configuration of the cascaded multilevel inverters using series connection of new sub-multilevel basic blocks is presented. The basic structure of the proposed sub-multilevel inverter is made of three isolated batteries and eight unidirectional power switches. Hereby, by changing the polarity of one of such batteries and two power switches, two different modules of sub-multilevel inverters can be extracted that each of them is able to be incorporated into two different cascaded structures as the series basic blocks. Contemporary, to determine the suitable magnitudes of the integrated batteries, two different algorithms for each topology along with their relevant mathematical analysis have been also given. In this study, a complete comparison between the proposed topologies and several recently presented structures has been conducted. The compiled comparisons can prove the fact that both the proposed cascaded inverters are capable of generating a higher number of output voltage levels with less number of switching counts. Other advantages of these structures are reduction of voltage sources numbers, DC sources variety, value of total blocking voltage, and also conducting losses. In order to demonstrate the correct operation of the proposed structures and presented algorithms, some experimental results will be also shown.