Total Harmonic Distortion Minimization of Multilevel Converters Using Genetic Algorithms

This paper presents a genetic algorithm (GA) optimization technique to find the optimum switching angles of 11-level inverter with minimum number of dc sources and switches in comparison with the cascade multilevel inverter in order to minimize the total harmonic distortion (THD) of their output voltage waveform. Theoretical and simulation results for an 11-level converter show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm to determine the optimum angles in order to decrease the undesired harmonics and produce very high quality output voltage waveform.