A New Basic Step-Up Cascaded 35-Level Topology Extendable To Higher Number of Levels

A new step-up Cascaded Multi-Level Inverter (CMLI) has been proposed in this paper. The proposed basic 35-level topology is composed of 4 DC sources, 2 capacitors, 2 diodes and 12 switches. The sum of input DC sources is 10Vdc, where the peak output voltage is 17Vdc. So, the proposed basic topology can act a step-up inverter with the gain of about 1.7. The proposed basic topology has simple structure. Since the voltage balancing of capacitors are done naturally, the control of proposed topology is also simple. The number of levels per number of components (such as DC sources, switches, gate driver circuits, diodes and capacitors) in proposed basic topology is higher than other similar converters. In this paper, the proposed basic topology has been introduced and its operational principles have been presented. Then, it has been compared with recently presented novel structures. The comparison results validate the advantages of proposed basic topology. Then, the proposed basic topology has been extended to act as a Multi-Level inverter. Finally, the appropriate performance of proposed basic topology has been verified by simulation results, extracted from PSCAD/EMTDC software.