Research on a Novel Power Electronic Impulse Voltage Generator

This paper presents a novel power-electronic-based impulse voltage generator that employs a Marx circuit topology, using IGBTs as the main switches. In MATLAB, a nearest-level modulation algorithm is used to fit and modulate standard lightning waveforms or chopped lightning waveforms. The resulting on-off timing sequence is then sent to the FPGA, which, through a driver chip, controls the switching on and off of each switch in the Marx circuit to produce standard lightning waveforms, chopped lightning waveforms, and other waveforms. This paper details the system architecture, the operating principle of the main circuit, and the waveform modulation algorithm. A prototype with a 30-stage Marx generator was built for experimental validation. Experimental results demonstrate that, with an input voltage of 800V, the system can output a stable 24kV standard lightning waveform or chopped lightning waveform.