Fast detection of open-switch fault in cascaded H-Bridge multilevel converter

Cascaded H-Bridge converter has recently been utilized in different high-power applications due to its modular and simple structure. In order to have a balanced operation after a fault occurrence in this converter, it is necessary to detect the switch fault and its location. In this paper, a fast power switch fault detection method is presented to identify the fault and its location. Only one voltage measurement per phase is required by this method, and the fault detection is faster compared to the existing methods. Moreover, it is easy for implementation on an FPGA device, due to the use of simple math, relational and state machine blocks. The proposed method is verified by computer simulations.