Continuous Carrier-Based vs. Space Vector PWM for Five-Phase VSI

Multi-phase machines are nowadays considered for various applications due to the benefits that they offer when compared to their three-phase counterparts. Multi-phase voltage source inverters (VSI) are dominantly used in the power conversion stage for their supply and an appropriate pulse width modulation (PWM) method is therefore necessary to provide required output voltages to a multi-phase machine. This paper deals with five-phase VSI and development of continuous PWM schemes for sinusoidal inverter output voltage generation. Both carrier-based and space vector PWM (SVPWM) methods are elaborated, implemented into digital signal processor (DSP), and tested on a five-phase VSI supplying a star-connected load.