Experimental Evaluation of Dead-Time Impacts on the Efficiency and THD for a Three-Phase Five-Level Cascaded H-Bridge Inverter

Cascaded H-Bridges Multilevel Inverter (CHBMI) is a fascinating solution for optimization purposes in several application fields. The CHBMI performance optimization can be reached both with hardware and software solutions. In detail, the CHBMI performances are a function of the modulation strategy adopted and its parameters such as modulation index, switching frequency, and dead time. This paper presents performance experimental analysis on dead time effects on CHBMI performance in terms of harmonic distortion and conversion efficiency. In this analysis, two different modulation strategies have been considered and implemented. The paper focuses on modulation strategies implemented, the test bench set-up, experimental investigations, and the results comparative analysis.