A Cascaded Half-Bridge Three-Level Inverter With an Inductive DC-Link for Flexible Voltage Boosting

Voltage boosting three-level inverters may present a monotonically increasing or decreasing voltage gain when enlarging the pulsewidth modulation (PWM) ratio. To produce a flexible voltage gain, this article proposes a novel three-phase three-level PWM inverter by cascading a traditional two-level three-leg (B6) inverter with half-bridges. The proposed inverter is supplied by an inductive dc-link consisting of a dc source in series with an inductor that is charged by shooting through the half-bridges in the B6 structure. The voltages across the cascaded half-bridges are subsequently boosted, and the output voltage is stepped up due to the cascaded connection. A moderate voltage gain is achieved with proper selections of two modulation variables while maximizing the PWM ratio. In particular, when the two modulation variables are equal, a constant voltage boosting gain of two is maintained irrespective of the PWM ratio. Additionally, low voltages are induced on the components, which facilitates the use of low-voltage devices. The operating principle of the proposed inverter with a modified third-harmonic-injection PWM scheme is presented, followed with theoretical analysis, comparison, and design considerations. Experimental tests on a 1.5-kVA inverter prototype verify its feasibility.