A fault tolerant cascaded multilevel inverter topology for open circuit faults in switches

This paper proposes cascaded multilevel inverter topology that sustains open circuit faults in all switches. The basic unit of proposed circuit is designed with four unidirectional and two bidirectional switches to produce a five level output. It maintains the output voltage for an open circuit fault in any one of the bidirectional switch and the output falls to three levels for an open circuit fault in any one of the unidirectional switches. The proposed circuit is simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK and a hardware prototype is developed to validate the theoretical and simulation claims.