Comparison of Pulse Width Modulation Techniques for Diode-Clamped and Cascaded Multilevel Inverters.

Multilevel inverter technology has become the most significant method of energy conversion from DC to AC for uninterrupted power supply. The quality of the power supply depends on the appearance of harmonics, which is considered a problem that needs to be overcome. This paper demonstrates the use of a new modulation technique to reduce the harmonics in both diode-clamped and cascaded multilevel inverters, examining its Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) compared to other PWM methods. Simulations were carried out in MATLAB/Simulink for five-level diode-clamped and cascaded multilevel inverters. The simulation results of both multilevel inverters using the sinusoidal PWM, modified reference PWM, modified carrier PWM, and modified reference and modified carrier PWM methods showed that the latter had the best THD performance for both inverter types, especially for the cascaded multilevel inverter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]