Generalized diamond-type single DC-source switched-capacitor based multilevel inverter with step-up and natural voltage balancing capabilities

This paper proposes a diamond-shaped high step-up switched-capacitor based basic multilevel inverter topology. The basic switched-capacitor (SC) stage consists of 2 active switches, 2 diodes, and 2 capacitors. Using a single DC source with the unfolding circuit (10 switches, 5 capacitors, and 5 diodes) results in the production of 17 voltage-steps at the output with the gain of up to 8 times of the input voltage. By extending the diamond-shaped switched-capacitor stages, higher voltage levels and voltage gains can be possible. The suggested topology employs two half-bridges (instead of a full-bridge) to produce positive, zero, and negative steps, which reduces the Voltage Stress (VS) on two output switches and consequently reduces Total Voltage Stress (TVS). In addition, the natural voltage balancing of capacitors eliminates the need to an additional control circuitry and consequently reduces the total converter size, complexity, and cost. In addition, modularity, scalability, low voltage ripple on capacitors, low total voltage stress, high power quality, and capability of supplying low/medium power factor (R-L) loads are some of the merits of the proposed topology. The low Cost Function (CF) obtained in the comparison section as well as experimental results verifies the advantages of the proposed topology.