A Cascaded Multilevel Inverter Based on Switched-Capacitor for High-Frequency AC Power Distribution System

The increase of transmission frequency reveals more merits than low- or medium-frequency distribution among different kinds of power applications. High-frequency inverter serves as source side in high-frequency ac (HFAC) power distribution system (PDS). However, it is complicated to obtain a high-frequency inverter with both simple circuit topology and straightforward modulation strategy. A novel switched-capacitor-based cascaded multilevel inverter is proposed in this paper, which is constructed by a switched-capacitor frontend and H-Bridge backend. Through the conversion of series and parallel connections, the switched-capacitor frontend increases the number of voltage levels. The output harmonics and the component counter can be significantly reduced by the increasing number of voltage levels. A symmetrical triangular waveform modulation is proposed with a simple analog implementation and low modulation frequency comparing with traditional multicarrier modulation. The circuit topology, symmetrical modulation, operation cycles, Fourier analysis, parameter determination, and topology enhancement are examined. An experimental prototype with a rated output frequency of 25 kHz is implemented to compare with simulation results. The experimental results agreed very well with the simulation that confirms the feasibility of proposed multilevel inverter.