Sawtooth Carrier-Based PWM Methods With Common-Mode Voltage Reduction for Symmetrical Multiphase Two-Level Inverters With Odd Phase Number

The increased phase number of multiphase systems enables us to exploit more degrees of freedom, such as the shape of phase carriers in pulsewidth modulation (PWM). The sawtooth carrier-based PWM (SCPWM) techniques are proposed in this article to reduce common-mode voltage (CMV) in both the peak-to-peak amplitude and the changing frequency, and it can be easily extended to symmetrical multiphase two-level inverters with any odd phase number. Theoretical analysis reveals that the switching between mirror-symmetrical carriers within one phase narrows the range of the sum of switching states in all phases, which leads to the reduction of CMV amplitude. Meanwhile, the overlapping of sawtooth carriers' straight edges among different phases slows down the change of the sum of switching states, which results in the decrease of CMV changing frequency. Moreover, the effects of voltage harmonics injection and switches' dead-time settings on the CMV reduction performance under the proposed SCPWM techniques are investigated. Finally, the experiment results in a five-phase induction machine and multiphase RL loads verify the improved CMV performance and the extensibility of the proposed SCPWM methods.