Abstract
In this paper, a new single-phase multilevel converter (MLC) topology based on the cascade connection of novel basic units is presented. The proposed basic unit generates 17-level output voltage waveform and can be extended for higher voltage levels by using a simple cascade connection. Both the proposed basic unit and cascaded topologies are compared with other state-of-the-art MLC topologies. From the comparison results, it will be shown that the proposed topology has several advantages such as the reduced number of power electronic components, lesser number of dc sources, and blocking voltage. Moreover, the proposed MLC has reduced power losses and improved efficiency. The operability and feasibility of the proposed converter are validated through extensive simulation and experiments. Finally, the corresponding results affirming the predominance of the proposed topologies are presented.