ABSTRACT
Conventional Phase Shifted Pulse Width Modulation (PS-PWM) is a usual switching technique for Z source/Quasi Z Source (qZS) based Cascaded Multilevel Inverters (CMI) (qZS-CMI). PS-PWM scheme causes higher switching losses and creates electromagnetic interference (EMI) problem for higher number of cascaded modules. To address these issues, novel modified Level Shifted PWM (LS-PWM) technique is proposed with the aim of obtaining equal power from cascaded modules under abnormal condition. The direct use of the Alternate Phase Opposed Disposed PWM (APOD-PWM) results in an unequal power sharing between the qZSI modules, under all operating conditions. An effective carrier rotation is incorporated in the conventional APOD-PWM to make the equal power sharing between the qZSI modules. The proposed scheme is an excellent solution for the Photovoltaic (PV) systems to address the problem of partial or complete shading, temperature variation, PV module failure, and dust accumulation on the PV panels. Furthermore, the relation between the PSPWM and APOD-PWM is geometrically obtained, which indicates that the proposed modulation scheme gives higher voltage gain over LS-PWM and PS-PWM techniques. Additionally, detailed switching loss analysis for the proposed PWM methods are added to validate low switching losses and thus high efficiency. The MATLAB Simulink simulations are presented to verify the proposed modulation.