New mixture of hybrid stacked multicell with half-cascaded converter to increase voltage levels

This study presents a new topology of hybrid stacked multicell (SM) converter which generates high number of output voltage levels with fewer number of power electronic switches. The proposed topology is composed of three parts including traditional SM converter, half-cascaded converter and H-bridge converter. In other words, this converter is the mixture of H-bridge converter and SM converter series with half-cascaded converter. Number of output voltage levels and the rootmean- square value in proposed converter is four times than that of traditional flying capacitor multicell and SM converters. Moreover, it improves output voltage frequency spectrum and decreases the number and rating of components, stored energy and rating of flying capacitors which are available in the proposed converter. For switching this converter, phase-shifted pulse-width modulation method has been used. Therefore the self-balancing trait of the flying capacitor converter is preserved in presented converter. The suggested topology is simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK software, and simulation results are presented to indicate the well-performance of the novel converter. In addition, the experimental results of proposed topology prototype have been presented to validate its practicability.