Harmonic Minimization in Three-Phase Hybrid Cascaded Multilevel Inverter Using Modified Particle Swarm Optimization

This paper proposes a modified particle swarm optimization (MPSO) for fast convergence and harmonic minimization in three-phase eleven-level hybrid cascaded multilevel inverter (HC-MLI). Selective harmonic elimination pulsewidth modulation (SHE-PWM) technique implemented through MPSO has been used in the proposed work for synthesizing an eleven-level output voltage using two dc sources, a precharged capacitor, and twelve switches. The switching angles of the three-phase eleven-level HC-MLI has been computed for eliminating specified lower order odd harmonics such as 5th, 7th, 11th, and 13th from the output voltage of the HC-MLI. In the proposed MPSO optimized HC-MLI, capacitor voltage balance is also ensured even at higher modulation indices by utilizing the redundant switching states available at different switching instances of the HC-MLI. The performance of the MPSO optimized three-phase eleven-level HC-MLI has been verified through simulation and experimentation on a 1.5-kW prototype using closed-loop control. The results obtained through MPSO are compared with the results obtained through genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) in terms of convergence rate and harmonic content. It has been found that MPSO gives improved results in comparison to GA and PSO.