A Programmable Single-Phase Multilevel Current Source Inverter

The conventional single-phase multilevel current source inverters suffer from the high count of switches for increasing the levels. Therefore, how to generate more levels with reduced-count of switches is attractive. In this paper, a programmable single-phase current source inverter is presented. It can achieve the programmable level output with only five switches. Different from the existing single-phase reduced-count multilevel inverters, it has the advantages of a simple structure and programmable level output. Finally, the simulation and experimental tests are carried out. And, the experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed programmable multilevel inverter.