Thirteen-level cascaded H-bridge inverter operated by generic phase shifted pulse-width modulation

The study proposes a new Generic phase shifted (PS) pulse-width modulation (PWM) approach. Four Generic PS PWM algorithms are proposed. The important advantage of the proposed approach is that it can be easily implemented with multilevel inverters of any topology. The first method produces the 13-level PS PWM signal from six 3-level phase disposition (PD) PWM signals whose carrier signals are PS from each other by the time interval of 1/(6f_carrier). The second method produces the 13-level PWM signal also from six 3-level PD PWM signals, whereas their modulation and the carrier signals are both PS by the time interval of T_modulation/(6 × 5), where T_modulation is the modulation cycle time interval. The third method produces the 13-level PWM signal from three 5-level PD PWM signals, whereas their carrier signals are PS from each other by the time interval of 1/(3f_carrier). The fourth method produces the 13-level PS PWM signal from three 5-level PD PWM signals, whereas their modulation and carrier signals are both PS by the time interval of T_modulation/(3 × 5). The proposed methods are analysed and compared one to the other and to the conventional PD PWM method. The analysis is validated by extensive simulation results.