Single-phase five-level inverter with less number of power elements

This paper presents a single-phase five level Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) inverter. The proposed inverter has the advantage of using less number of components. Two carrier signals identical to each other with an offset equivalent to the amplitude of the triangular carrier signal are used to generate PWM signals for the switches. Some switches operate at fundamental frequency and others operate at switching frequency. Operational principles with switching functions are analyzed. Simulation and experimental results have been done to demonstrate the validity of the proposed inverter. Switches signals are generated using FPGA XC3S400. The proposed inverter has been compared with the conventional single-phase three-level PWM inverter under the conditions of identical dc voltage supply and switching frequency. In addition, it is compared with the well-known five-level PWM inverter found in the literature to highlight the advantage of the proposed inverter.