15 Level Single Phase Multilevel Inverter Topology with Equal Area Criteria PWM Technique

Abstract

90 percent of the motors used in industries are induction motors due to its simple design and high robustness. Total Harmonic Distortion of output voltage waveform keeps decreasing as the number of voltage levels increases. The main consideration while selecting a multilevel inverter is its quality of the output voltage waveform which is assessed in terms of the amount of harmonics content present in it. So, Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) value in the output voltage waveform is one of the important criteria in the multilevel inverter (MLI). The 15 level hybrid multilevel inverter circuit was simulated in Matlab/Simulink environment and the results were experimentally analysed for a resistive load. C code was developed to generate PWM pulses. Arduino microcontroller is used to feed the PWM pulses to the switches in the inverter circuit. From the overall analysis, it is proved that the Equal Area Criteria (EAC) method is superior to the other PWM methods.