Purpose

Multilevel inverters (MLIs) have been studied widely over the past two decades because of their inherent advantages and interesting features. However, most of the newly introduced structures suffer from the increased standing voltage of the switches, which is defined as the maximum off-state voltage on the switches, losing modularity and increased number of direct current (DC) voltage sources. The purpose of this study is to propose a new hybrid MLI topology to alleviate the mentioned problems.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed approach in this study includes using the advantage of two different topologies and combine them in a way that the advantages of both of the topologies are achieved. Therefore, the approach is to design a hybrid topology from two existing topologies so that a new topology has resulted.

Findings

This paper proposes a new hybrid MLI with lower power electronic switches and lowers DC voltage sources in comparison with the classic structures. The proposed MLIs maintain a balance between the number of switches, the standing voltage on the switches and the number of DC sources. The topology description, modulation method and comparative study have been presented. Also, another more reduced structure is presented for higher power factor operation. The MATLAB simulation and experimental results of a nine-level inverter have been presented to verify its operation.

Originality/value

The hybrid topology has a new structure that has not been presented before. It is important to emphasize that the topology combination and achieving the hybrid topology is wisely accomplished to improve some features of the MLI.

中文翻译：

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扩展的混合交叉开关多级逆变器电路拓扑

目的

多电平逆变器 (MLI) 由于其固有的优势和有趣的特性，在过去二十年中得到了广泛的研究。然而，大多数新引入的结构都受到开关耐压增加（定义为开关上的最大断态电压）、失去模块化和直流 (DC) 电压源数量增加的影响。本研究的目的是提出一种新的混合 MLI 拓扑来缓解上述问题。

设计/方法/途径

本研究中提出的方法包括利用两种不同拓扑的优势，并将它们结合起来以实现两种拓扑的优势。因此，该方法是从两个现有拓扑中设计一个混合拓扑，从而产生一个新的拓扑。

发现

与经典结构相比，本文提出了一种具有较低功率电子开关和较低直流电压源的新型混合 MLI。拟议的 MLI 在开关数量、开关上的稳定电压和直流电源数量之间保持平衡。给出了拓扑描述、调制方法和比较研究。此外，还提出了另一种更简化的结构，用于更高的功率因数操作。给出了九电平逆变器的 MATLAB 仿真和实验结果以验证其操作。

原创性/价值

混合拓扑有一个以前没有出现过的新结构。需要强调的是，拓扑组合和实现混合拓扑是明智地完成的，以改进 MLI 的某些特性。