Analysis of multicarrier PWM methods for a single-phase five level inverter

This paper investigates and analyses different multicarrier PWM methods for a single phase five level cascaded inverter. Carrier disposition methods, phase shifted and a hybrid method are discussed with respect to resulting switching frequencies, complexity of implementation, spectrum of the output waveform, and the use of inverter state redundancies to perform additional application specific control tasks, such as power flow control from each DC source. A concept of separating the waveshaping function from the switch selection is explored and selected experimental results are presented.