A novel five-level three-phase PWM rectifier with reduced switch count

This paper proposes a new circuit topology for a multilevel pulse width modulation (PWM) rectifier. The proposed method forms a new circuit by combining a diode clamp-type topology with a flying capacitor-type topology. The proposed circuit uses only 12 switches, despite the use of a five-level three-phase PWM rectifier. Further, the proposed circuit can obtain good performance, same as a conventional multilevel circuit. This paper describes about the features of the proposed topology; the control strategy and the loss analysis that is estimated by a circuit simulator. In addition, the basic operation of the proposed method is confirmed by simulation and experimental results. The proposed converter achieved total harmonic distortion of 3.4% for the input current and efficiency of 97.4% for a 1 kW class experimental setup.