New Three-Phase Multilevel Inverter With Reduced Number of Power Electronic Components

In this paper, a new configuration of a three-phase five-level multilevel voltage-source inverter is introduced. The proposed topology constitutes the conventional three-phase two-level bridge with three bidirectional switches. A multilevel dc link using fixed dc voltage supply and cascaded half-bridge is connected in such a way that the proposed inverter outputs the required output voltage levels. The fundamental frequency staircase modulation technique is easily used to generate the appropriate switching gate signals. For the purpose of increasing the number of voltage levels with fewer number of power electronic components, the structure of the proposed inverter is extended and different methods to determine the magnitudes of utilized dc voltage supplies are suggested. Moreover, the prototype of the suggested configuration is manufactured as the obtained simulation and hardware results ensured the feasibility of the configuration and the compatibility of the modulation technique is accurately noted.