A novel cascaded multilevel inverter topology

A novel cascaded multilevel inverter topology is proposed in this paper, which is composed of any number of H-bridge cells. The H-bridge cells may be two-level ones, or any level of flying-capacitor ones. Different separate voltage sources may be used in different cells. Compared with the conventional cascaded topology, the new topology requires fewer switching devices and separate voltage sources when producing the same number of output voltage levels. It simplifies the circuit and reduces costs. As an example, a topology composed of a two-level H-bridge cell and a three-level flying-capacitor H-bridge cell is studied in this paper, and the validity is proved by simulated and experimental results.