• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.60 no.1
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• pp.48-52
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• 2011

Over the years, traditionally, six-switch three-phase inverters have been widely utilized for variable speed alternating current motor drives. Recently, some efforts have been made on the application of four-switch three phase inverter for uninterruptible power supply and variable speed drives. This is due to some advantages of the four-switch three phase inverter over the conventional six-switch three-phase inverters such as reduced price due to reduction in number of switches, reduced switching losses, reduced number of interface circuits to supply logic signals for the switches, simpler control algorithms to generate logic signals, less chances of destroying the switches due to lesser interaction among switches, and less real-time computational burden. However such as slow di/dt and speed limitation, are the inherent characteristics and main drawbacks of the four-switch configuration. Those problems can be overcome in conjugation with Voltage-doublers which has additional advantage, such as unity power factor correction.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.1328-1336
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• 2013

Nowadays multilevel inverters are developing generally due to reduced voltage stress on power switches and low total harmonic distortion (THD) in output voltage. However, for increasing the output voltage levels the number of circuit devices are increased and it results in increasing the cost of converter. In this paper, a novel multilevel inverter is proposed. The suggested topology uses less number of power switches and related gate drive circuits to generate the same level in output voltage with comparison to traditional cascaded multilevel inverter. With the proposed topology all levels in output voltage can be realized. As an illustration, a symmetric 13-level and asymmetric 29-level proposed inverters have been simulated and implemented. The total peak inverse (PIV) and power losses of presented inverter are calculated and compared with conventional cascaded multilevel inverter. The presented analyses show that the power losses in the suggested multilevel inverter are less than the traditional inverters. Presented simulation and experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of the proposed inverter to obtain the maximum number of levels with less number of switches.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.418-431
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• 2018

This paper presents a new asymmetrical multilevel inverter with a reduced number of power electronic components. The proposed multilevel inverter is analyzed using two different configurations: i) First Configuration (with a switched diode) and ii) Second Configuration (without a switched diode). The presented topologies are compared with recent multilevel inverter topologies in terms of number of switches, gate driver circuits and blocking voltages. The proposed topologies can be cascaded to generate the maximum number of output voltage levels and they are suitable for high voltage applications. Various power quality issues are addressed for both of the configurations. The proposed 11-level inverter configuration is simulated using MATLAB and it is validated with a laboratory based experimental setup.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.951-963
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• 2015

In this paper, a new symmetric multilevel inverter is proposed. A simple structure for the cascaded multilevel inverter topology is also proposed, which produces a high number of levels with the application of few power electronic devices. The symmetric multilevel inverter can generate 2n+1 levels with a reduced number of power switches. The basic unit is composed of a single and double source unit (SDS-unit). The application of this SDS-unit is for reducing the number of power electronic components like insulated gate bipolar transistors, freewheeling diodes, gate driver circuits, dc voltage sources, and blocked voltages by switches. Various new algorithms are recommended to determine the magnitude of dc sources in a cascaded structure. Furthermore, the proposed topology is optimized for different goals. The proposed cascaded structure is compared with other similar topologies. For verifying the performance of the proposed basic symmetric and cascaded structure, results from a computer-based MATLAB/Simulink simulation and from experimental hardware are also discussed.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.127-135
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• 2014

In this paper a novel converter structure based on cascade converter family is presented. The suggested multilevel advanced cascade converter has benefits such as reduction in number of switches and power losses. Comparison depict that proposed topology has the least number of IGBTs among all multilevel cascade type converters which have been introduced recently. This characteristic causes low cost and small installation area for suggested converter. The number of on state switches in current path is less than conventional topologies and so the output voltage drop and power losses are decreased. Symmetric and asymmetric modes are analyzed and compared with conventional multilevel cascade converter. Simulation and experimental results are presented to illustrate validity, good performance and effectiveness of the proposed configuration. The suggested converter can be applied in medium/high voltage and PV applications.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.217-224
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• 2013

This paper presents a diagnostic method for a sparse matrix converter that detects faults in any single switch or a pair of switches. The sparse matrix converter is functionally equivalent to the standard matrix converter but has a reduced number of switches. The proposed diagnostic method is based in the measurement of input and output currents. The currents have respective characteristic according to the location of faulty switches. This method not only detects the switches of open-circuit fault but identifies the location of the faulty switching devices without complicated calculations. The simulation and experimental results verify that, based on the proposed method, the fault of sparse matrix converter can be easily and fast detected.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics A
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• v.33A no.4
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• pp.142-151
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• 1996

This paper presents a new symmetrical routing architecture for FPGA and an efficient routing algorithm for the architecture. The routing architecture adopts the segmented wires and the improved switch modules. Segmetned wires construct routing channels which pass through the chip in vertical and horizontal directions. To maximize the utility of a track, a track in each switch module can be separated in two part using a programmable switch to route two different net. The proposed routing algorithm finds all assignable tracks for a given net and selects the best track from assignable tracks to minimize the number of programmable switches and the unused portion of the wire segments. In order to stabilize the perfomrance of the algorithm, the routing order is defined by weighted sum of the number of wire segment, the length of wire segmetn, and the number of pin. Experimental results show that routability is improved dramatically and the number of crossing switches are reduced about 40% compared with the previous works.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.1610-1620
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• 2015

A major problem in conventional multilevel inverter is that an increase in power semiconductor switches causes an increase in cost and switching losses of the inverter. The multicarrier strategy adopted for the multilevel inverters has become more popular due to reduced cost, lower harmonic distortion, and higher voltage capability than the conventional switching strategy applied to inverters. Various topologies and modulation strategies have been reported for utility and drive applications. Level shifted based pulse width modulation techniques are proposed to investigate the performance of the multilevel inverter. The proposed work focuses on reducing the utilized switches so that the cost and the switching losses of the inverter do not go up and the consistent efficiency could be achieved. This paper presents the detailed analysis of these topologies. The analysis is based on the number of switches, DC sources, output level, maximum voltage, and the efficiency. As an illustration, single phase cascaded multilevel inverter topologies are simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK and the experimental results demonstrate the viability of these inverters.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.1314-1321
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• 2014

A new simplified topology for a dynamic voltage restorer (DVR) based on direct converter with a reduced number of switches is presented. The direct converter is fabricated using only three bi-directional controlled switches. The direct converter is connected between the grid and center-tapped series transformer. The center-tapped series transformer is used to inject the compensating voltage synthesized by the direct converter. The DVR can properly compensate for long-duration, balanced, and unbalanced voltage sag and swell by taking power from the grid. The switches are driven by ordinary pulse width modulation signals. Simulation and hardware results validate the idea that the proposed topology can mitigate sag of 50% and swell of unlimited quantity.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.532-541
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• 2016

A single-phase asymmetrical cascaded multilevel inverter is introduced with the goal of increasing power quality with the reduction of power in insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) switches. In the present work, the proposed inverter topology is analyzed and generalized with respect to different proposed algorithms for choosing different voltage source values. To prove the advantages of the proposed inverter, a case study involving a 17-level inverter is conducted. The simulation and experimental results with reduced THD are also presented and compared with the MATLAB/SIMULINK simulation results. Finally, the proposed topology is compared with different multilevel inverter topologies available in the literature in terms of the number of IGBT switches required with respect to the number of levels generated in the output of inverter topologies.