Simulation of Five Level Diode Clamped Multilevel Inverter

The power electronics device which converts DC power to AC power at required output voltage and frequency level is known as inverter. The voltage source inverters produce an output voltage or a current with levels either 0 or +ve or-ve V dc. They are known as two-level inverters. Multilevel inverter is to synthesize a near sinusoidal voltage from several levels of dc voltages. Multilevel inverter has advantage like minimum harmonic distortion. Multi-level inverters are emerging as the new breed of power converter options for high power applications. They typically synthesize the stair-case voltage waveform (from several dc sources) which has reduced harmonic content. Multi-level inverters have many attractive features, high voltage capability, reduced common mode voltages near sinusoidal outputs, low dv/dt, and smaller or even no output filter; sometimes no transformer is required at the input side, called the transformer-less solution, making them suitable for high power applications In this paper a 5-level Diode clamped multilevel inverter is developed by IGBTS using Simulink. Gating signals for these IGBTS have been generated by designing comparators. In order to maintain the different voltage levels at appropriate intervals, the conduction time intervals of IGBT have been maintained by controlling the pulse width of gating pulses[6] (by varying the reference signals magnitude of the comparator). The simulation results for 5-level and THD for the output have been identified by MATLAB/SIMULINK