New space vector modulation algorithms applied to multilevel converters with balanced DC-link voltage

María de los Ángeles Martín Prats^*, Juan Manuel Carrasco Solís, and Leopoldo García Franquelo

This work presents a survey of new space vector modulation algorithms for high power voltage source multilevel converters. These techniques provide the nearest switching vectors sequence to the reference vector and calculates the on-state durations of the respective switching state vectors without involving trigonometric functions, look-up tables or coordinate system transformations which increase the computational load corresponding to the modulation of a multilevel converter. These algorithms drastically reduce the computational load maintained permitting the on-line computation of the switching sequence and the on-state durations of the respective switching state vectors. The on-state durations are reduced to a simple addition. In addition, the low computational cost of the proposed methods is always the same and it is independent of the number of levels of the converter. The algorithms have been satisfactorily implemented in very low-cost microcontrollers.