Cross-switched multilevel inverter: an innovative topology

Multilevel inverters have attractive features which make them one of the most popular fields of investigations. They can operate in high power and high voltage conditions. Multilevel inverters generate output voltage with high quality and low harmonic contents. As the number of output voltage levels increases, the quality of the output voltage is improved leading to reduction of the filtering requirements. However, multilevel inverters have the disadvantage of increased power electronic switches. This leads to higher cost, size and complication. Some advanced topologies have been introduced to reduce the number of power electronic switches, unfortunately, most of these topologies need high voltage switches on their structure making them unsuitable for high voltage conditions. In this study, an innovative topology for multilevel inverter is proposed which reduces the number of switches considerably without using high voltage switches. The proposed topology is a general topology which can be extended for any number of voltage levels. The authors call this topology as cross-switched multilevel inverter. The simulation results obtained in PSCAD/EMTDC as well as the experimental results verify the proposed topology.