A novel structure for multi-level inverter with reduced components

This paper introduces a new structure of a multi-level inverter (MLI) to generate high-level AC voltages using a low number of switches with a quasi-sine waveform. The small number of driver circuits utilised in bidirectional switches is a salient characteristic of this inverter. Also, the number of conducting switches at each voltage level is low in this structure. This results in lower conduction losses of the switches. The proposed topology can be used as the cascaded structure with different approaches to select the value of voltage sources. Power losses are discussed for the proposed structure. To compare the proposed multi-level inverter and demonstrate its superiority, a comparison has been made with some recently presented topologies. According to the comparison results, the advantage of the proposed structure is producing high voltage levels with a smaller number of switches and driver circuits. To prove the suitable performance of the proposed MLI, a 21-level symmetric and 37-level asymmetric inverter containing 14 switches are designed and simulated in the MATLAB/Simulink program. A laboratory prototype for each of these inverters is implemented. The experimental results finely verify the simulations. Besides, an accurate comparison with recently introduced multilevel inverters has been carried out to confirm the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed structure.