New Reduced Asymmetric Basic Module Multilevel Converters for Cascaded Configurations

Requiring a high number of power switches and their rating are the main limitations of multilevel converters in medium-voltage applications. The main objective of this paper is, introduce a reduced asymmetric basic module (RABM) for cascaded multilevel converters that require a less number of power switches and a lower total blocking voltage value in competition with other multilevel converter topologies. The proposed module comprises eight half-bridge converters that are connected in different ways to generate 63-level. The comparison results among the proposed module and other multilevel converters show that proposed module can generate a large number of levels with keeping constant the number of power switches. The simulation outcomes confirm the performance of the proposed module in both symmetric and asymmetric operation modes.