Family of Multiport Switched-Capacitor Multilevel Inverters for High-Frequency AC Power Distribution

This paper proposes a family of multiport switched-capacitor multilevel inverter (SCMLI) topologies for high-frequency ac power distribution. It employs asymmetric dc voltage sources with a common ground that makes it ideal to be employed in renewable energy farms and modern electric vehicles. The proposed family of step-up SCMLI attains higher number of output voltage steps with optimum component count in comparison to several existing topologies. The problem of capacitor voltage balancing is solved as the capacitors are inherently charged to a finite voltage every half cycle. In-depth study on two staircase modulation strategies, namely, selective harmonic elimination and minimum total harmonic distortion (THD) scheme is presented with study on the variation of switching angles and THD with modulation indices under both schemes. Working principle and analysis are presented for the proposed family of topologies. Simulation outcomes are validated with experimental results under both the aforementioned modulation schemes with equal and unequal output voltage waveform steps.