NEW CASCADED MULTILEVEL INVERTER TOPOLOGY WITH REDUCED NUMBER OF SWITCHES

Abstract: Demand for high-voltage and high power inverters are increasing day by day. Thus multilevel inverter topologies are becoming more popular. In this paper a multilevel inverter topology is discussed. The inverter consists of series connection of a number of basic units. Cascaded multilevel inverter topology can be symmetric or asymmetric. The adopted basic unit generates positive voltage levels and negative voltage levels can be obtained by adding a H-bridge. Since the number of switches used to generate a particular number of voltage levels is less compared to the conventional topologies, cost and the installation space reduces. Four different algorithms are also discussed to generate even and odd number of voltage levels. The features of the inverter can be verified using the MATLAB simulation.

Keywords: Asymmetric, basic unit, cascaded multilevel inverter, H-bridge, symmetric.