A 7-level single DC source cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverters control using hybrid modulation

This paper presents a new hybrid cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter (HCMLI) motor drive DTC control scheme for electric vehicles or hybrid electric vehicles where each phase of the inverter can be implemented using only a single DC source. Traditionally, each phase of the inverter require n DC source for 2n + 1 output voltage levels. In this paper, a scheme is proposed that allows the use of a single DC source as the first DC source which would be available from batteries or fuel cells, with the remaining (n - 1) DC sources being capacitors. This scheme can simultaneously maintain the DC voltage level of the capacitors, produce a nearly sinusoidal output voltage due to its high number of output levels and therefore a high performance and also efficient torque and flux controller is obtained, enabling a DTC solution for hybrid multilevel inverter powered motor drives.