Fundamentals of a new diode clamping multilevel inverter

The conventional diode clamping inverter suffers from such problems as de l ink unbalance, indirect clamping of the inner devices, turn-on snubbing of the inner de rails as well as series association of the clamping diodes etc . It is due largely to these problems that the application of the conventio nal diode clamping inverter in practice has been deterred, in spite of the growing discussion in the literature. The paper proposes a new diode clampi ng inverter, which works without the series association of the clamping dio des. An auxiliary resistive clamping network solving the indirect clamping problem of the inner devices is also discussed for both the new and convent ional diode clamping inverter. Operation principle, clamping mechanism, aux iliary clamping as well as experimentation are presented.