Low Switching Frequency Based Asymmetrical Multilevel Inverter Topology With Reduced Switch Count

 ABSTRACT:

 The inceptions of multilevel inverters (MLI) have caught the attention of researchers for medium and high power applications. However, there has always been a need for a topology with a lower number of device count for higher efficiency and reliability. A new single-phase MLI topology has been proposed in this paper to reduce the number of switches in the circuit and obtain higher voltage level at the output. The basic unit of the proposed topology produces 13 levels at the output with three dc voltage sources and eight switches. Three extentions of the basic unit have been proposed in this paper. A detailed analysis of the proposed topology has been carried out to show the superiority of the proposed converter with respect to the other existing MLI topologies. Power loss analysis has been done using PLECS software, resulting in a maximum ef_ciency of 98.5%. Nearest level control (NLC) pulse-width modulation technique has been used to produce gate pulses for the switches to achieve better output voltage waveform. The various simulation results have been performed in the PLECS software and a laboratory setup has been used to show the feasibility of the proposed MLI topology.

KEYWORDS:

1.      DC - AC converter

2.      Multilevel inverter

3.      Reduce switch count

4.       Nearest level control (NLC)

SOFTWARE: MATLAB/SIMULINK

CONCLUSION:   

The paper presents a novel MLI topology with multiple exten- sion capabilities. The basic unit of the proposed topology produces 13 levels using eight unidirectional switches and three dc voltage sources. Three different extension of the basic unit has been proposed. The performance analysis of the basic unit of the proposed topology has been done and the comparative results with some recently proposed topologies in literature have been presented in the paper. Further, a power loss analysis of the dynamic losses (switching and conduction) in the MLI has also been presented, which gives the maximum efficicnecy of the basic unit as 98.5%. The power loss distribution in all the switches for different combination of loads have also been demonstrated in the paper. The performance of the proposed topology has been simulated with dynamic modulation indexes and different combination of loads using PLECS software. A prototype of the basic unit has been developed in the laboratory and the simulation results have been validated using the different expriemntal results considering different modulation indexes.

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