A novel reduced switch count single-phase to three-phase AC/AC converter

Recently, reduced-switch-count converters have garnered particular attention in power electronic systems due to the numerous advantages such as low cost, low weight and volume, and high reliability offered by them. In this paper, a new reduced-switch-count converter topology is proposed as a single-phase to three-phase ac/ac converter. This converter employs less number of semiconductor devices compared to former single-phase to three-phase ac/ac converters. The modulation scheme of the novel converter is developed and two methods are devised for enhancing DC bus voltage utilization and hence minimizing the output voltage THD and the switching loss. The proposed converter features sinusoidal input and output, unity input power factor, and more importantly, low manufacturing cost. The validity of theoretical issues is confirmed by simulation results.