A Creative Design of Symmetric Multilevel Inverter with Substantial Improvements

A novel symmetric multilevel inverter is introduced in this paper. To validate the superiority of the proposed inverter versus the conventional symmetric inverters and the most recently introduced ones, a full comparison is provided. The proposed inverter can generate all desired voltage levels using a lower number of circuit devices including power semiconductor switches and related gate driver circuits of switches. By decreasing the number of required circuit devices, the total cost is significantly reduced and the control scheme is simpler. Also the reduction in number of on-state switches in the proposed structure causes to diminish voltage drop and power losses. The simulation and experimental results are presented and compared to confirm the practicality of the proposed multilevel structure.