A New Carrier-Based Pulse Width Modulation Scheme with Reduced Output Voltage Total Harmonic Distortion for Multi-Level Inverters

This paper proposes a novel Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) switching technique based on Optimized Carrier Peaks-PWM (OCP-PWM) which can be used to control both single phase and three-phase multilevel inverters. The proposed PWM scheme is designed according to multi-peak selection on carriers a way to define the optimum values for carrier peaks and then minimizing the output voltage Total Harmonic Distortion (THDv), switching frequency (f(s)), and also switching losses, in comparing with the other carrier-based PWM methods. To examine the performance of the presented PWM scheme, a five-level converter has been employed including six power MOSFETs to produce five level in the output. In comparison with typical PWM switching methods for single-phase inverters, the presented PWM scheme produces low harmonic components in the output voltage. To investigate the reliability of the presented PWM scheme for single-phase five-level converters a 2.5kVA/400 V prototype is carried out by applying a TMS320F28335 digital signal processor.