Optimal harmonic reduction approach for PWM AC-AC converter using nested memetic algorithm

In recent decades, optimization methods have attracted the attention of researchers to solve complicated objective functions in various problems. Evolutionary optimization algorithms are the most widely used optimization tools in the past few decades. So in this paper, a new memetic optimization algorithm based on firefly algorithm is presented. In the proposed algorithm, the firefly algorithm is composed with a nested local search, which has been run at each step of the algorithm. To evaluate the proposed method, some benchmark functions are used and then as a practical problem the optimal switching angles to minimize the harmonic distortions factor for pulse width modulation (PWM) AC-AC inverters are obtained by the algorithm. Simulation results in comparison with other methods show the effectiveness of proposed method in harmonic reduction and increasing power quality.