ABSTRACT This paper proposes a new switched-capacitor thirteen-level inverter with a voltage gain of six and reduced device counts. It involves two switched-capacitor H-bridge (SCHB) units and one back-end H-bridge (BEHB) unit, which generally includes one input DC source, twelve switches, two diodes, and three capacitors. In the SCHB units, the capacitors can be charged as self-balanced by turning on a few switches at most output voltage levels. The switching algorithm, optimal capacitor determinations, and efficiency calculation have been brought. The proposed inverter has multiple advantages, such as the low number of device counts per level, low-cost function (CF), low capacitor voltage ripple, and 94% efficiency. To assess the proposed topology, simulations, and experimental results have been performed by MATLAB and Arduino controller board ARM cortex-M3, respectively, in both steady-state and transient conditions.
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