Performance Comparison of Two Level Inverter with Classical Multilevel Inverter Topologies

Since the advent of power electronic devices, Inverters have become an integral part in applications like UPS, AC drives, HVDC transmission. These applications mainly use voltage source inverters. Voltage source inverters are classified based on the no. of levels in output voltage as two-level inverter and multilevel inverters (diode clamped, flying capacitor and cascaded H-bridge). This paper enlightens the performance comparison of two-level inverter using space vector PWM and all three classical multilevel inverters (5-level) using phase disposition multi-carrier modulation. This comparison is based on factors like total harmonic distortion, EMI, switching frequency, switching losses and the no. of switching devices. The simulation of all these inverters is done in MATLAB/Simulink and the simulation results are used as a source of comparison.