A Novel Analytical Method for Selective Harmonic Elimination Problem in Five-Level Converters

摘要

Multilevel converters have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. The efficiency parameters of a multilevel converter such as the switching losses and total harmonic distortion (THD) mainly depend on the modulation strategy used to control the converter. Among all of the modulation techniques, the selective harmonic elimination (SHE) method is particularly suitable for high-power applications due to its low switching frequency and high quality output voltage. This paper proposes a new expression for the SHE problem in five-level converters. Based on this new expression, a simple analytical method is introduced to determine the feasible modulation index intervals and to calculate the exact value of the switching angles. For each selected harmonic, this method presents three-level or five-level waveforms according to the value of the modulation index. Furthermore, a flowchart is proposed for the real-time implementation of this analytical method, which can be performed by a simple processor and without the need of any lookup table. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated with several simulation and experimental results for a single phase five-level diode-clamped inverter.