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Comparison of Three Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation Techniques for Five-

Level Cascaded Inverter using Simulink

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Comparison of Three Sinusoidal Pulse Width
Modulation Techniques for Five- L evel Cascaded
Inverter using Simulink
Savyasachi. G. K1
Dept. of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering,
Mysuru, Karnataka, India.
Rakshith. P3
Dept. of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering,
Mysuru, Karnataka, India.
Abstract— Multi-level inverters are becoming very popular
nowadays due to the usage of low rating devices for high rating
applications, which overcome the limitation imposed by the
rating of the semiconductor switches. In this paper, a
comparative study of three different SPWM techniques for five-
level cascaded inverter is presented. Simulink is used for
simulation. Simulation results; waveforms and THD graphs are
obtained. Harmonics of three SPWM techniques are tabulated
for comparison.
Keywords— Multi-level Inverter, SPWM, THD, Simulink.
I. INTRODUCTION
Inverter application is increasing as most of the loads
used are of alternating current loads and the renewable
energy sources like wind, solar, etc., gives the direct current
outputs. Many inverter topologies and different firing
techniques were introduced in last few decades.
In paper [1], a simulation of Unipolar-SPWM strategy for
single phase full bridge inverter is presented. Different three-
level inverter topologies with SPWM technique that
minimize the harmonic distortion in the output of the inverter
has been simulated in paper [2].
In paper [3], the basic theory of a single-phase SPWM
inverter, its Simulink modeling is presented. A new reliability
evaluation technique on the basis of the state enumeration
approach for multi-level inverters engages harmonic
distortion levels produced by the inverter in the reliability
index calculation is presented in [4]. Paper [5] proposes a
new multi-level inverter topology based on H-bridge with
DC-link switches. The output voltage is closer to sinusoidal
wave. A new PWM method based on Phase Opposition
Disposition modulation is which requires only one carrier
signal is suggested.
Multi-level inverters play an important role in micro-grids
which integrates several renewable energy sources. The
reliability of multi-level inverters which interface different
IJERTV4IS051337
(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 4 Issue 05, May-2015
Avinash. R2
Dept. of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
Vidyavardhaka College of Engineering,
Mysuru, Karnataka, India.
Apoorva. G. K4
Dept. of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
PES Institute of Technology and Management,
Shivamogga, Karnataka, India.
renewable unit, has critical impacts on providing electricity to
the consumers connected to the grid.
The multi-level inverter system is used when high power
with reduced harmonic content is required. But, as the output
voltage level increases, the number of semiconductor
switches in the circuit increases. In case of multi-level
inverter system, the loss of semiconductor devices cannot be
analyzed by conventional methods.
The elementary concept of a multilevel inverter is to
achieve higher power by using a series of semiconductor
switches with several low voltage dc sources for the power
conversion by synthesizing staircase voltage waveforms.
In this paper, a basic Simulink models for generating
conventional SPWM and waveforms are presented for better
understanding of the further discussion. Then simulation of a
cascaded five-level inverter for three different SPWM
techniques is presented.
The objectives of this paper are as follows: Simulation of
conventional method of generation of SPWM is presented in
Section II. Simulation of three SPWM techniques has been
presented in Section III. Simulation results for five-level
cascaded inverter for three different SPWM techniques are
given in Section IV and harmonics are tabulated for
comparison.
II. SIMULATION OF GENARATING CONVENTIONAL
SINUSOIDAL PULSE WIDTH MODULATION WAVEFORM
Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation techniques are
characterized by pulses with different duty cycle but constant
amplitude for each period. Pulse width is modulated in order
to obtain controlled output voltage and reduced harmonics.
SPWM is the most commonly used method for motor control
and inverter applications. To generate the SPWM signal,
conventionally, carrier triangle wave is compared with the
sine wave of operating frequency.
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 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 4 Issue 05, May-2015

1
-K- 1
s
Out1
Pulse Integrator Gain
Generator

Constant Scope
Fig. 1: Simulink model for generating triangular wave as in Fig. 2

Fig. 6: Sine output of Signal Generator1 (red) and Triangular output of Tri 1
(pink) and Tri 2 (aqua blue).

Fig. 2: Output waveform of model in Fig.1.

1
-K- 1
s
Out1
Pulse Integrator Gain
Generator Fig. 7: SPWM output of model shown in Fig. 5 (Out 1 & Out 2).

1
Fig.5 shows the conventional method of generating
Constant Scope SPWM waveform. In this figure, Tri 1 and Tri 2 are the
Fig. 3: Simulink model for generating triangular wave as in Fig.4. triangular wave generators whose Simulink modeling is
shown in Fig. 1 and Fig.3 respectively which gives carrier
signal at 10 kHz. Signal Generator1 gives the sinusoidal wave
of operating frequency (50 Hz) with magnitude of -1 to +1, as
shown in Fig. 6. The two triangular waves and sine wave is
compared as shown in Fig. 5 and the output is the SPWM
waveform as shown in Fig.7.

III. SIMULATION MODELS OF THREE SPWM TECHNIQUES

Fig. 4: Output waveform of model in Fig.3.

In this section, three different SPWM techniques used to
control five-level cascaded inverter are presented. The three
different techniques are as follows:
Out1
Signal
Generator1 Out2

1 SPWM
Out1 Generator
Sign1 Saturation
Out1 AND 1
Out1
Logical
Tri 1 Scope Pulse Operator
Generator
2
Out2 AND 2
Sign2 Saturation1
Out1 Out2
Logical
Pulse
Operator1
Generator1
Tri 2
Fig. 5: Simulink model for generating SPWM as in Fig. 7. AND 3
Pulse Out3
Logical
Fig.1 shows the Simulink model for generating triangular Generator2
Operator2
wave as shown in Fig.2. Triangular wave generated has
magnitude from 0 to 1 volt. AND 4
Pulse Out4
Logical
Fig.3 shows the Simulink model for generating triangular Generator3
Operator3
wave as shown in Fig.4. Triangular wave generated has Fig. 8: Simulink Model of S-SPWM gate pulses generation for five-level
magnitude from -1 to 0 volt. cascaded inverter.

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(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 4 Issue 05, May-2015

A. Technique-1: Selective-SPWM (S-SPWM) C. Technique-3: Multi-carrier SPWM (MC-SPWM)

In this technique, the SPWM generated by conventional In this technique, four triangular carrier waves are compared
method as show in Fig. 7 is logically AND with the PWM with a sinusoidal wave of fundamental frequency (operating
pulses of desired pulse width as shown in Fig. 12 to select the frequency=50Hz) as shown in Fig. 20 using the model as in
portion of SPWM as gate pulses by using model as shown in
Fig. 10 to get the gate pulses shown in Fig. 21
Fig. 8 is as shown in Fig. 13.
B. Technique-2: Phase-Shift SPWM (PS-SPWM) Signal
Generator1
In this technique, two triangular carrier waves and two 1

sinusoidal waves are used as shown in Fig. 16. Here one sine Out1
Sign1 Saturation
Out1

wave lags the other by 900. Thus the output gate pulses of
model in Fig. 9, will also have the phase shift of 90 0 between Tri 1
2
two sets of SPWM waveforms as shown in Fig. 17. Out2
Sign2 Saturation1
Out1

Tri 2
Scope
Signal 3
Generator 1
Out3
Out1 Sign3 Saturation2
Out1 Out1
Sign1 Saturation1
Tri 1
Tri 3
4
Out1
2 Scope Out4
Sign4 Saturation3
Out1
Tri 2 Out2
Sign2 Saturation2
Tri 4

Fig. 10: Simulink Model of MC-SPWM gate pulses generation for five-level
90 degree 3
cascaded inverter.
phase delay Out3
Sign3 Saturation3 IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
Fig.11 shows a Simulink model of five-level cascaded
4
Scope1 inverter. It consists of two H-bridge with four semiconductor
Out4
Sign4 Saturation4 switch each, with separate DC voltage sources of 115V. Two
Fig. 9: Simulink Model of PS-SPWM gate pulses generation for five-level H-bridges are operated with either of three SPWM techniques
cascaded inverter. mentioned earlier.

Dis cre te ,
T s = 5e -06 s .

po we rgui
D

D
g

S11 S12
S

Vdc1

Out1
D

D
g

Out2
S13 S14
Out3
S

Out4
+
Pul se Gate - v
Generator Pul ses
THD
Vout
D

D
g

S21 S22
S

Vdc2
D

D
g

S23 S24
S

Fig. 11: Simulink model of five-level cascaded inverter.

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 200

100

-100 International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)

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Time (s) Vol. 4 Issue 05, May-2015

Fig. 12, 16 & 20 shows the basic waveforms used to Fundamental (50Hz) = 182.8 , THD= 48.04%

generates gating signals as shown in Fig. 13, 17 & 21 using 25

models shown in Fig. 8 (S-SPWM), 9 (PS-SPWM) &10

Mag (% of Fundamental)
20

(MC-SPWM) respectively. When these gating pulses are used 15

in the model shown in Fig. 11, it gives the output voltage
waveforms as shown in Fig. 14, 18 & 22 respectively. 10

5
Harmonics graphs for these three SPWM gate pulse
techniques are shown in Fig. 15, 19 and 23 respectively. The 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Harmonic order
fundamental components and harmonics are tabulated in
Fig. 15: FFT analysis of output voltage waveform as in Fig. 14.
Table-I for comparison.

Fig. 16: Sine output of Signal Generator (red), with phase delay of 900 (blue),
Triangular output of Tri 1 (pink) and Tri 2 (aqua blue).

Fig. 12: Output of SPWM generator and Pulse generators shown in Fig. 8.

Fig. 17: Gating pulses generated by the model shown in Fig. 9, (PS-SPWM).

Selected signal: 50 cycles. FFT window (in red): 2 cycles

200

100

-100

Fig. 13: Gating pulses generated by the model shown in Fig. 8, (S-SPWM). -200
Fig. 018: Output
0.1 Voltage
0.2 of
0.3 inverter
0.4 shown0.5 in Fig.
0.6 11 0.7
for the 0.8
gating pulses
0.9 as1
Time (s)
shown in Fig. 17, (PS-SPWM).

Fundamental (50Hz) = 161.2 , THD= 61.61%

1

0.8
Mag (% of Fundamental)

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Harmonic order

Fig. 14: Output Voltage of inverter shown in Fig. 11 for the gating pulses as Fig. 19: FFT analysis of output voltage waveform as in Fig. 18.
shown in Fig. 13, (S-SPWM).

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 200

100

-100
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
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Time (s) Vol. 4 Issue 05, May-2015

Fundamental (50Hz) = 229.5 , THD= 26.62%

0.35

0.3

Mag (% of Fundamental)
0.25

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Harmonic order

Fig. 23: FFT analysis of output voltage waveform as in Fig. 22.

In all three techniques THD is high due to the harmonic of

Fig. 20: Sine output of Signal Generator1 (blue) and Triangular outputs of
order 200 i.e., 10 kHz, which is the frequency of carrier
Tri 1 (pink), Tri 2 (aqua blue), Tri 3 (red) and Tri 4 (green). triangular signal.
TABLE I. PERCENTAGE HARMONICS IN OUTPUT VOLTAGE (VOUT)
SPWM Fundamental Harmonic order THD
Technique (50Hz) 3 5 7 9 (%)
S-SPWM 182.8 V 24.90% 7.59% 5.13% 8.57% 48.04
PS-SPWM 161.2 V 0.88% 0.93% 0.63% 0.74% 61.61
MC-SPWM 229.5V 0.30% 0.34% 0.31% 0.29% 26.62

From Table I, it can be seen that the MC-SPWM has good

fundamental component and less harmonics. The S-SPWM
technique results in more harmonics. PS-SPWM has very less
harmonics (less than 1%), almost nearer to MC-SPWM. THD
can be reduced by a greater extent using proper filter design.
V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Fig. 21: Gating pulses generated by the model shown in Fig. 10, (MC- This paper has done a comparative analysis of three
SPWM). sinusoidal pulse width modulation techniques. The
waveforms and harmonic analysis for the three techniques,
using Simulink, are tabulated for comparison. From the
harmonics table it can be observed that Multi-carrier
sinusoidal pulse width modulation technique (MC-SPWM)
results in fewer harmonic compared to other two techniques.

REFERENCES
(1) Sachin Maheshri and Prabodh Khampariya, “Simulation of single phase
SPWM (Unipolar) inverter”, International Journal of Innovative
Research in Advanced Engineering (IJIRAE), Volume 1, Issue 9, pp.
12-18, October 2014.
(2) Kapil Jain, Pradyumn Chaturvedi, “MATLAB-based Simulation &
Fig. 22: Output Voltage of inverter shown in Fig. 11 for the gating pulses as Analysis of Three-Level SPWM Inverter”, International Journal of Soft
shown in Fig. 21. (MC-SPWM). Computing and Engineering (IJSCE), Volume-2, Issue-1, pp. 56-59,
March 2012.
(3) Sandeep Phogat, “Analysis of Single-Phase SPWM Inverter”,
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