Mali 2019
Mali 2019
Mali 2019
Abstract—Since the advent of power electronic devices, inverter has high THD. The advancements in pulse-width
Inverters have become an integral part in applications like modulation techniques scales down the harmonic content
UPS, AC drives, HVDC transmission. These applications and thus gives a better output voltage waveform. The size
mainly use voltage source inverters. Voltage source inverters and cost of filter reduces due to high predominant harmonics
are classified based on the no. of levels in output voltage as two-
in PWM inverters [1]. However, high switching frequency
level inverter and multilevel inverters (diode clamped, flying
capacitor and cascaded H-bridge). This paper enlightens the caters to high switching losses, thereby the overall
performance comparison of two-level inverter using space efficiency is reduced. Further, PWM inverters are used for
vector PWM and all three classical multilevel inverters (5-level) low and medium voltage applications and cannot be used for
using phase disposition multi-carrier modulation. This high voltage applications because the voltage stresses on
comparison is based on factors like total harmonic distortion, each power electronic switch is high and switches with these
EMI, switching frequency, switching losses and the no. of high voltage ratings are either not available or are very
switching devices. The simulation of all these inverters is done costly.
in MATLAB/Simulink and the simulation results are used as a
source of comparison. Trade-off between THD and switching losses existed
Keywords— Multilevel inverter, two-level inverter, space vector
before the evolution of multilevel inverters. Multilevel
PWM, phase disposition multi-carrier modulation, total
harmonic distortion, Simulink. inverter [2]-[3] gives more than two levels in the output
voltage waveform. The advantage of MLI over PWM
I. INTRODUCTION inverters is that it can be used to reduce the harmonic
Inverters use power electronics devices to convert DC content at low switching frequencies. Thus, it reduces the
power to AC power at a particular switching frequency. switching losses and gives a near sinusoidal output. MLI
Single-phase inverter has two basic configurations i.e., half uses many power electronic devices thereby reducing the
bridge and full bridge with output voltage levels as ±Vdc/2 voltage stress on each device. Many new multilevel inverter
and ±Vdc respectively. The output frequency in both these topologies with reduced number of switches are proposed in
configurations is same as the switching frequency. The [4]-[5]. However, it is of utmost importance to understand
harmonic spectrum of output voltage consists of all odd the basic MLI topologies before proceeding to new and
harmonics with predominant third harmonic. The filter advanced topologies. The three basic topologies, also known
design for such a waveform is quite difficult as the as classical topologies of MLI are:
application may involve continuous change in output
frequency. In addition, the filter requires bulky inductors, 1) Neutral Point Clamped (NPC-MLI) or Diode
which increases the size of inverters. Clamped (DC-MLI)
2) Flying Capacitor (FC-MLI)
Three phase inverters find many industrial applications 3) Cascaded H-Bridge (CHB-MLI)
but their use is limited to increasing power quality concerns.
Three phase inverters with 1800 mode of conduction also This paper is structured as follows. Section II explains in
known as square wave inverter or six-step voltage source brief about space vector PWM along with the basic idea of
operation of two-level inverter. Section III discusses the
978-1-5386-8158-9/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
basic multilevel inverter topologies and their simulation in
MATLAB/Simulink. Section IV discusses different
modulation strategies for multilevel inverters. Section V
contains the simulation results in MATLAB/Simulink.
Section VI gives the comparative analysis of two-level
inverter with multilevel inverters. Section VII concludes the
proposed work. The transformation of three phases to two phases can be
done using the matrix equation 4. The space vector is
obtained using equation 5.
II. TWO-LEVEL INVERTER
Two level inverter (3-phase) consists of six switches.
The switches must have bidirectional current carrying
capability along with unidirectional voltage blocking
capability. Thus, an IGBT with a parallel diode or a
MOSFET fulfills this requirement. These inverters when
employed with suitable modulation strategy can be used to
get desired sinusoidal current with less distortion. SPWM
and SVPWM are the two most popular modulation
techniques. DC bus utilization in case of SPWM is around A typical space vector diagram for a two level inverter is
78.5% while that of SVPWM is 90.7%. As a result, shown in figure 2. In all, there are eight switching states
SVPWM technique [6] is used for the switching of devices. which are divided into six active and two null states. The
This is quite a sophisticated technique with intensive active states (V1 to V6) represent the corners of the hexagon
computation and because of its superior performance; it is and the null states (V0 and V7) are present at the origin. In a
widely used in Industry. Figure 1 shows the simulation of six step inverter, each active state is held for one-sixth of the
two level inverter with SVPWM technique in fundamental time period. The reference space vector can be
MATLAB/Simulink. computed by synthesizing the two voltage vectors in a
particular sector. The time for which a particular vector is
applied can be computed by applying the volt-sec balance
[7] as given in equation 6.
VI. COMPARISON
Based on the simulation results, the comparison of two-level
inverters with multilevel inverters is given in table 1. The
comparison is done by taking into consideration the
Fig. 12. Fourier Analysis of two-level inverter simulation results.
No. of 0 (n-1)* 0 0
Clamping (n-2)
diodes per
phase
Fig. 13. Fourier Analysis of DC-MLI or NPC-MLI
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