A Generalized Cascaded Multilevel Inverter Using Series Connection of Submultilevel Inverters

Application of multilevel inverters for higher power purposes in industries has become more popular. This is partly because of high-quality output waveform of multilevel inverters in comparison with two-level inverters. In this paper, initially a new topology for submultilevel inverter is proposed and then series connection of the submultilevel inverters is proposed as a generalized multilevel inverter. The proposed multilevel inverter uses reduced number of switching devices. Special attention has been paid to obtain optimal structures regarding different criteria such as number of switches, standing voltage on the switches, number of dc voltage sources, etc. The proposed multilevel inverter has been analyzed in both symmetric and asymmetric conditions. The validity of the proposed multilevel inverter is verified with both computer simulations using PSCAD/EMTDC software and laboratory prototype implementation.