Investigation on Fault Tolerant Capability of a Single Source Switched Capacitor Multilevel Inverter

Maintaining the proper performance of inverters in various applications is crucial for preventing the detrimental consequences of systems' failure. This article investigates the fault tolerance of a switched capacitor multilevel inverter, which has redundant switching states for each output voltage level, in both open-circuit and short circuit faults. In each case, given the type of fault and associated switch, new switching algorithms are proposed to maintain the output voltage levels. Also, the appropriate performance of the converter in postfault conditions is considered. Finally, to ensure the accuracy of the converter performance and switching algorithms in normal and postfault performance states, the structure is implemented and experimental results are presented.