Cross Connected Compact Switched-Capacitor Multilevel Inverter (C3-SCMLI) Topology With Reduced Switch Count

In this brief, a new cross-connected compact switched capacitor ((CSC)-S-3) cell is introduced for multilevel inverter applications. The proposed CCS cell uses four switches and two diodes for interconnecting the input dc source and floating capacitors (FCs). A nine-level inverter is derived with the proposed (CSC)-S-2 cell requiring only ten switches and two FCs. The proposed (CSC)-S-3 cell-based MLI is self-balancing and has a voltage gain of two. All the switches of the proposed topology have a maximum blocking voltage within the input dc voltage (v(in)) value. The operating principle is detailed, and a simple logic gate based gate pulse generation scheme is presented. Detailed simulations and experimental results obtained from an 850 W prototype with several test cases are presented to validate the operation of the proposed topology. Finally, a detailed comparative assessment is performed with other recent SCMLIs to demonstrate the merits and superiority of the proposed topology.