A general method used to conduct a harmonic analysis on carrier-based pulse width modulation inverters

Abstract

A method used to determine the harmonic components of the output waveform of a pulse width modulation (PWM) inverter is presented. The method calculates the Fourier coefficients of individual positive and negative pulses of the output PWM waveform and adds them together using the principle of superposition to calculate the Fourier coefficients of the entire PWM output signal. This method allows direct calculation of harmonic magnitudes and angles without having to use linear approximations, look-up tables, or Bessel functions. The method presented is a general method that can easily be extended to various types of multilevel inverters and PWM schemes.