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The cost reduction of power-electronic devices, the increase in their reliability, efficiency, and power capability, and lower development times, together with more demanding application requirements, has driven the development of several new inverter topologies recently introduced in the industry, particularly medium-voltage converters. New more complex inverter topologies and new application fields come along with additional control challenges, such as voltage imbalances, power-quality issues, higher efficiency needs, and fault-tolerant operation, which necessarily requires the parallel development of modulation schemes. Therefore, recently, there have been significant advances in the field of modulation of dc/ac converters, which conceptually has been dominated during the last several decades almost exclusively by classic pulse-width modulation (PWM) methods. This paper aims to concentrate and discuss the latest developments on this exciting technology, to provide insight on where the state-of-the-art stands today, and analyze the trends and challenges driving its future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modular multilevel converters have become the prominent topology for medium- and high-voltage applications. The performance of these converters highly depends on the accuracy of the used modulation approach, for which the capacitor voltage of submodules (SM) are usually assumed to be equal. This article exhibits that ignoring the capacitor voltage differences among SMs adversely affects the system performance. This becomes more obvious the larger the capacitor voltage differences are. Hence, this article proposes a more accurate feedforward modulation approach that takes into account either the instantaneous capacitor voltage value and the real output voltage in the modulation stage. As a result, in applications where larger SM voltage differences are expected, the current distortion and control performance are improved. Particularly, switching–saving approaches benefit from this method as it enables their operation with reduced switching losses without the downsides of increased distortion due to capacitor voltage differences. The proposed approach is analyzed and compared with the nearest-level modulation and with the level-shift PWM. Simulations and experimental validation are presented to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiphase converters have been applied to an increasing number of industrial applications in recent years. On the other hand, multilevel converters have become a mature technology mainly in medium- and high-power applications. One of the problems of multilevel converters is the dc voltage unbalance of the dc bus. Depending on the loading conditions and the number of levels of the converter, oscillations appear in the dc voltages of the dc link. This paper presents a feedforward modulation technique for multilevel multiphase converters that reduces the distortion under balanced or unbalanced dc conditions. The proposed modulation method can be applied to any multilevel-converter topology with any number of levels and phases. Experimental results are shown in order to validate the proposed feedforward modulation technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, a multilevel cascaded converter fed with a single dc source has been presented. An analysis of the steady-state working limits of this type of converter is presented in this paper. Limits of the maximum output voltage and the minimum and maximum loading conditions for stable operation of the converter are addressed. In this paper, a way to achieve any dc voltage ratio (inside the stable operation area of the converter) between the H-bridges of the single-dc-source cascaded H-bridge converter is presented. The proposed dc-voltage-ratio control is based on a time-domain modulation strategy that avoids the use of inappropriate states to achieve the dc-voltage-ratio control. The proposed technique is a feedforward-modulation technique which takes into account the actual dc voltage of each H-bridge of the converter, leading to output waveforms with low distortion. In this way, the dc voltage of the floating H-bridge can be controlled while the output voltage has low distortion independently of the desired dc voltage ratio. Experimental results from a two-cell cascaded converter are presented in order to validate the proposed dc-voltage-ratio control strategy and the introduced concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a new control method for modular multilevel converter (MMC), which is based on a modification of the conventional nearest level control (NLC) scheme implemented by a model predictive control (MPC) technique. Applying the proposed method, the simplicity of the NLC is maintained while the current control ability in terms of both phase current and circulating current is enhanced by the MPC technique. A proper rounding function is used for each arm of the MMC instead of the conventional nearest integer function. The rounding function is determined by evaluating a cost function within the frame of MPC. To validate the proposed technique, a three-phase MMC prototype is employed. The conventional NLC-based control approach of MMC is also evaluated for comparative purposes. Results show that the proposed method exhibits excellent current-regulating ability. Compared with the conventional control scheme, the overall performance is improved without significantly increasing the computational burden or adding relevant complexity to the control system design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilevel converters have received increased interest recently as a result of their ability to generate high quality output waveforms with a low switching frequency. This makes them very attractive for high-power applications. A cascaded H-bridge converter (CHB) is a multilevel topology which is formed from the series connection of H-bridge cells. Optimized pulse width modulation techniques such as selective harmonic elimination or selective harmonic mitigation (SHM-PWM) are capable of preprogramming the harmonic profile of the output waveform over a range of modulation indices. Such modulation methods may, however, not perform optimally if the dc links of the CHB are not balanced. This paper presents a new SHM-PWM control strategy which is capable of meeting grid codes even under nonequal dc link voltages. The method is based on the interpolation of different sets of angles obtained for specific situations of imbalance. Both simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the proposed control method. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Space-vector modulation (SVM) is a well-suited technique to be applied to multilevel converters and is an important research focus in the last 25 years. Recently, a single-phase multilevel modulator has been introduced, showing its conceptual simplicity and its very low computational cost. In this paper, some of the most conventional multilevel SVM techniques have been chosen to compare their results with those obtained with single-phase multilevel modulators. The obtained results demonstrate that the single-phase multilevel modulators applied to each phase are equivalent with the chosen well-known multilevel SVM techniques. In this way, single-phase multilevel modulators can be applied to a converter with any number of levels and phases, avoiding the use of conceptually and mathematically complex SVM strategies. Analytical calculations and experimental results are shown, validating the proposed concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a simple and low-computational-cost modulation technique for multilevel cascaded H-bridge converters. The technique is based on geometrical considerations considering a unidimensional control region to determine the switching sequence and the corresponding switching times. In addition, a simple strategy to control the dc-voltage ratio between the H-bridges of the multilevel cascaded converter is presented. Examples for the two-cell topology are shown, but the proposed technique can be applied to develop modulation methods for a higher number of H-bridges. Experimental results are presented to validate the proposed technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modulation techniques for multilevel converters can create distorted output voltages and currents if the dc-link voltages are unbalanced. This situation can be avoided if the instantaneous dc voltage error is not taken into account in the modulation process. This paper proposes a feed-forward space vector modulation method for a single-phase multilevel cascade converter. Using this modulation technique, the modulated output voltage of the power converter always generates the reference determined by the controller, even in worst case voltage unbalance conditions. In addition, the possibility of optimizing the dc voltage ratio between the H-bridges of the power converter is introduced. Experimental results from a 5-kVA prototype are presented in order to validate the proposed modulation technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simplified space vector modulation (SVM) techniques for multilevel converters are being developed to improve factors such as the computational cost, number of commutations, and voltage distortion. The feedforward SVM presented in this paper takes into account the actual dc capacitor voltage unbalance of the multilevel power converter. The resulting technique is a low-cost generalized feedforward 3-D SVM method and is particularized for three-phase multilevel diode-clamped converters. This new modulation technique can be applied to topologies where the gamma component may not be zero. The computational cost of the proposed method is similar to those of comparable methods and it is independent of the number of levels of the power converter. Experimental results using a three-level diode-clamped converter are presented to validate the proposed modulation technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-phase power converters are widely used in power applications as photovoltaics and fuel-cell power conditioners. In addition, multilevel converters are a well-known solution in order to achieve high-quality output waveforms in power systems. In this paper, a time-domain duty-cycle computation technique for single-phase multilevel converters named IDM is presented. The proposed technique is based on geometrical calculations with outstanding simplicity and generality. The proposed modulation technique can be easily applied to any multilevel converter topology carrying out the necessary calculations. The most common multilevel converter topologies have been studied in this paper as examples to introduce the proposed modulation strategy. Any other multilevel converter topology could be studied, and the corresponding IDM could be easily developed. In addition, the well-known optimized voltage balance strategy for voltage capacitor control using the redundant switching states of the system is applied working with the proposed IDM method, showing that both techniques are compatible. Experimental and simulation results for several single-phase multilevel converters are shown to validate the proposed modulation technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]