A Single Source Five Level Inverter with Reduced Number of Switches

Abstract

A single phase five level inverter with a dual reference single carrier Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) control scheme is presented. The inverter is capable of producing five levels of output voltage levels (Vdc, Vdc/2, 0, −Vdc/2, −Vdc) from the dc supply voltage. For this, the proposed multilevel inverter needs a single dc voltage source with a series connection of two capacitors, a bidirectional switch formed with four diodes and a switch, and an Hbridge cell. The proposed approach helps in reducing the number of independent dc voltage sources and number of switches as compared with conventional circuits.