Full binary combination schema for floating voltage source multi-level inverters

This paper presents schema of operation for floating voltage source multi-level inverters. The primary advantage of the proposed schema is that the number of voltage levels (and thus power quality) can be increased for a given number of semiconductor devices when compared to the conventional "flying capacitor" topology. However, the new schema requires fixed floating sources instead of capacitors and therefore is more suitable for battery power applications such as electric vehicles, flexible AC transmission systems and submarine propulsion. Alternatively transformer/rectifier circuits may be used to supply the floating sources in a similar way to cascaded H-bridge inverters. Computer simulation results are presented for 4-, 8- and 16-level inverter topologies. A 4-level laboratory test verifies the proposed method.