Simulation of an Alternate Arm Modular Multilevel Converter with overlap angle control for capacitor voltage balancing

The paper presents a newly introduced Voltage Source Converter (VSC) topology called as an Alternate Arm Modular Multilevel Converter (AAMMC). The different high voltage and industrial applications mainly based on the multilevel converters which are discussed briefly. The main purpose of this paper is to study the basic converter structure, its operating principle and its control strategy. The main concern of the converter is the balancing of the submodule capacitor voltages and proper sequential switching of the cells. To overcome this problem the modulation techniques such as sorting and overlap angle control for capacitor voltage balancing is employed to AAMMC. The analysis of the modulation techniques are validated with the help of MATLAB simulation results for AAMMC.