ENTRY 1 : FYP1 Reflection of Progress 1

The progress of the project that I have developed since week 1 includes identifying my area of interest for the title of the project. This involves in problem analysis and problem solving that were carried out during these weeks. The planning and analyzing of the project in terms of objective, expected outcome, working principle, equipment used and possibilities of the project also were carried out. Next, I also started to do some research and obtained as many references as I can that related to the project. The sources from where I searched for material reading that related to my research topic are mostly from library and the internet including Google Scholar.

The title of my research project is "Cascaded Multilevel Inverter Employing Nearest Level Switching Modulation". In real world, most of energy resources that has been used is basically a DC energy in nature such as wind, solar energy, tidal and biomass. However the electrical transmission system that has been applied by most of the countries using AC instead of DC. Moreover, most of the loads such as appliances and machines also are using AC power supply as their main source. This is where an inverter was used in order to convert DC energy to AC energy. Cascaded multilevel inverter is one of conventional multilevel inverter topology that build up in simple structure, modular and split DC sources. There are many switching modulation techniques but this project will employ a simple Nearest Level Modulation (NLM) switching technique. Implementation of the switching technique using programming and a functional cascaded multilevel inverter using Nearest Level switching technique are the expected outcomes of the project.

The technology applies for the project includes implementing Nearest Level Modulation switching technique by using programming. Some of the components that required for this project are gate drive circuit, power circuit, and Arduino. As for gate driver, the suggested circuit is by using IC IR2110 which are high voltage, high speed power MOSFET and IGBT drivers with independent high and low side referenced output channels.  For the power circuit, the circuit that will be used is simply cascaded multilevel inverter as shown in the figure. Arduino that will be used in this project is Arduino UNO.