Multilevel Circuit Topologies Based on the Switched-Capacitor Converter and Diode-Clamped Converter

Abstract

The novel multilevel circuit topologies are proposed in this paper. They are called multilevel circuit topologies based on switched-capacitor and diode-clamped converters (MCT-BSD). The topology structure and the operation principle, including the working states' transitions of the diode-clamped part, the voltages balancing mechanism of the dc link capacitors, and the pulse width modulated carrier control strategy are given. The switched-capacitor circuits contribute not only to balancing the voltages of capacitors but also to boosting the output voltage with a certain input dc voltage. The validity of the MCT-BSD is verified by simulations and experiments. The results show that balancing the voltages of capacitors, boosting the output voltages, and operating under the three-phase condition are all realized effectively in the MCT-BSD. The simulations also show the generalization of the MCT-BSD for <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">n</i> -level topologies.