Microcontroller Based Less Switches Topology and Digital Gating Technique for Single-Phase Five-Level Inverter

Abstract

The multilevel inverter is the idea of connecting such distributed DC energy sources (solar and fuel cells in addition to rectified output of wind turbines) to a power grid. Multilevel pulse width modulation (PWM) inverters have gained importance in high performance power applications without requiring high ratings on individual devices. The elementary concept of a multilevel converter to achieve higher power is to use a series of power semiconductor switches with several lower voltage DC sources to perform the power conversion by synthesizing a staircase voltage waveform. In the present paper we introduce a power circuit for single-phase five-level inverter which contains a very lower number of switches and the technique for the generation of required signals to control the operation of the inverter switches. The presented technique is implemented via microcontroller ATmega16. The simulation and practical results are presented.