Integer factor based SVPWM approach for multilevel inverters with continuous and discontinuous switching sequences

The most extensively employed strategy to control the AC output of power electronic inverters is the pulse width modulation (PWM) strategy. Since three decades modulation hypothesis continues to draw considerable attention and interest of researchers with the aim to reduce harmonic distortion and increased output magnitude for a given switching frequency. Among different PWM techniques space vector modulation (SVM) is very popular. However, as the number of output levels of the multilevel inverter (MLI) increases, the implementation of SVM becomes more difficult, because as the number of levels increases the total number of switches in the inverter increases which will increase the total number of switching states, which will result in increased computational complexity and increased storage requirements of switching states and switching pulse durations. The present work aims at reducing the complexity of implementing the space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) technique in multilevel inverters by using a generalized integer factor approach (IFA). The performance of the IFA is tested on a three-level inverter-fed induction motor for conventional PWM (CPWM) which is a continuous SVPWM method employing a 0127 sequence and discontinuous PWM (DPWM) methods viz, DPWMMIN using 012 sequences and DPWMMAX using a 721 sequence.