A Voltage-Based Multiple Fault Diagnosis Approach for Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Converters

This article proposes a fast and robust open-circuit fault diagnosis method without additional sensors for cascaded H-bridge multilevel converters (CHBMCs). The method is based on the error between the actual input-side voltage and the estimated one, with one detection threshold and 2n comparators in n cascaded H-bridges. Benefitted from the simple design of the fault location, spike elimination, and parameter estimation, with the lower implementation burden, the single and multiple faults in arbitrary positions are accurately identified within a fundamental cycle, and the diagnostic robustness is guaranteed under different transient changes. In view of the low complexity, the proposed scheme can be easily applied to the CHBMCs with arbitrary modules. The experimental results from a CHBMC prototype verify the effectiveness of the proposed method under different operating conditions and fault scenarios.