Design of a single-phase multilevel inverter with independent variable source and PDPWM modulation

Resumen

This paper describes the development of a power conversion system based on a cascaded single-phase multilevel inverter with a common variable DC source for electric traction applications. The proposed architecture uses high-frequency transformers to ensure galvanic isolation and enable power distribution from a single DC source, optimizing energy integration and DC bus variability. A phase-array modulation (PDPWM) technique is implemented to improve output signal quality and significantly reduce harmonic content. The result is a DC bus design with a variability between 45 V and 145 V, controlled by the pulse width of a PWM signal and a 13-level multilevel voltage signal with a total harmonic distortion (THD) of 9.38%.