Pulse commutation in nested-cell converters through auxiliary resonant pole concepts

Variants of the auxiliary resonant commutated pole principle are described, aiming at assisting the generation of PWM waveforms with soft transitions in multilevel nested-cell phase legs. Typical merits and demerits of the proposed circuits are addressed. In order to clarify the evolution of the topologies, various steps are discussed starting from a conventional two-level switching leg. Experimental results validate the concepts for a 800 V/100 A/10 kHz three-level nested-cell converter.

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