A Combinational Level-Shifted and Phase-Shifted PWM Technique for Symmetrical Power Distribution in CHB Inverters

In cascaded H-bridge (CHB) multilevel inverters (MLIs), phase-shifted pulse width modulation (PSPWM) and level-shifted pulse width modulation (LSPWM) are the two prominent techniques to attain multilevel and better performance. But both of them have certain drawbacks like in PSPWM the switching loss of all the semiconductors is high, and in LSPWM the power-sharing between the cascaded modules is not identical. These two drawbacks have been addressed in this article by proposing a novel modulation technique, named the phase opposed disposed phase-shifted PWM (PODPSPWM). In this technique, the level-shifted carriers have been rotated in such a way that there should not be any active power loss and simultaneously the carriers are phase-shifted as per the PSPWM technique. A detailed mathematical analysis of switching loss for all three methods has been presented. Moreover, the power-sharing and harmonic spectrum of the proposed PODPSPWM over other PWMs have been discussed. This novel modulation technique has been simulated in the MATLAB/Simulink software to validate the superiority of the operation. The 1.5-kW experimental prototype is developed to validate the performance of the proposed PODPSPWM modulation.