A comparison of PWM techniques for three-level five-phase voltage source inverters

Carrier-based PWM (CBPWM) and space vector PWM (SVPWM) are well-known PWM techniques that have been extensively studied in conjunction with multilevel three-phase inverters. Recently, PWM algorithms for multiphase multilevel inverters have started to appear in literature. One such SVPWM technique, developed for three-level five-phase voltage source inverters (VSIs), is considered in this paper. A slight modification of this method is further elaborated, and this is the second considered SVPWM. Next, two existing three-phase CBPWM techniques are adapted to five-phase systems in a simple manner. A comparative analysis of two CBPWM techniques and two SVPWM techniques in conjunction with three-level five-phase VSI is then performed. The comparison is based on detailed simulation studies and includes output phase voltage waveform and its spectrum, total harmonic distortion (THD) of the phase voltage and harmonic distortion (HD) of the phase voltage components in mutually perpendicular planes, and HD of the common mode voltage (CMV). The main conclusion is that the differences between the four considered PWM schemes are marginal, with one of the CBPWM techniques giving identical behaviour as one of the SVPWM methods.