New symmetric cascaded multilevel inverter with reduced number of controlled devices and low blocked voltage by switches

In this paper, a new symmetric cascaded multilevel inverter with reduced number of controlled switches and the low blocked voltage by switches is presented. The proposed topology is based on the new module, which inherently produces negative levels and zero level. Each module generates 7 levels. As the number of the output voltage levels or the magnitude of the output voltage increase, the maximum value of blocked voltage of the switches does not increase. The simulation results of this inverter are performed for a 19-level inverter by using MATLAB/Simulink to verify the performance of the proposed topology. Finally, the proposed inverter is compared with other topologies to illustrate the merit of this topology.