A new low cost and high efficiency cascaded half-bridge multilevel inverter with reduced number of switches

This paper presents a new low cost and efficient cascaded multilevel inverter (MLI) configuration. The proposed MLI requires less number of switching devices and isolated power supplies compared to the basic MLIs. It eliminates the problem of neutral point fluctuations, DC offset current, diode reverse recovery problem etc. as observed in conventional NPC and Flying capacitor configurations. Further, the given MLI also has the advantage of low conduction and switching losses. Thus, the proposed MLI has the advantages of low cost and better efficiency. This paper also gives the generalised version of proposed configuration for (2m+l) levels. All the details regarding circuit schematic, modes of operation and simulation results are presented in this paper.