ABSTRACT
Multilevel inverters represent a novel method of constructing DC/AC inverters. This idea was published by Nabae in 1980 in an IEEE international conference IEEE APEC’80 [1], and the same idea was published in 1981 in IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications [2]. Actually, multilevel inverters represent a different technique from the PWM method, which consists of vertically chopping a reference waveform to achieve a similar output waveform (e.g., sine wave). The multilevel inverting technique consists of accumulating the levels horizontally to achieve the waveform (e.g., sine wave). The soft-switching technique was implemented in DC/DC conversion in the 1980s. We would like to introduce this technique in DC/AC inverters as well, in this chapter.
