A New Mixed Cascaded Diode Clamped Multilevel Converter for High Power Applications

A New Mixed Cascaded Diode Clamped Multilevel Converter for High Power Applications

In this paper an improved new topology for multilevel converters is proposed. This converter is based on the mixture of the two most popular multilevel topologies, Diode-ClampedMultilevel converter and Cascaded Multicell converter. The main advantages of the proposed converter, in comparison withconventional mentioned converters, are doubling the RMS and the number of output voltage levels, improving the output voltage frequency spectrum and lowering the number of components anddecreasing the converter losses. These improvements are achieved by adding four low-frequency switches to a series ofcascaded Half-bridge Diode-Clamped Multilevel converters configuration. In this topology the number of clamping diodesand high frequency switches are decreased while the voltage ratings of them during a full cycle are kept constant. Also, a modified PWM based control method has been applied to the proposed topology which can decrease the harmonic distortions and THD. The circuit is simulated using PSCAD/EMTDC software and simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed configuration