Advanced cascade multilevel converter with reduction in number of components

Abstract

In this paper a novel converter structure based on cascade converter family is presented. The suggested multilevel advanced cascade converter has benefits such as reduction in number of switches and power losses. Comparison depict that proposed topology has the least number of IGBTs among all multilevel cascade type converters which have been introduced recently. This characteristic causes low cost and small installation area for suggested converter. The number of on state switches in current path is less than conventional topologies and so the output voltage drop and power losses are decreased. Symmetric and asymmetric modes are analyzed and compared with conventional multilevel cascade converter. Simulation and experimental results are presented to illustrate validity, good performance and effectiveness of the proposed configuration. The suggested converter can be applied in medium/high voltage and PV applications.