Electr Eng (2009) 91:221228

DOI 10.1007/s00202-009-0135-9

ORIGINAL PAPER

Particle swarm optimization for harmonic elimination

in multilevel inverters
S. Barkat E. M. Berkouk M. S. Boucherit

Received: 28 November 2007 / Accepted: 22 October 2009 / Published online: 13 November 2009
Springer-Verlag 2009

Abstract In this paper, harmonic elimination problem in

multilevel inverters with any number of levels is redrafted as
an optimization task. A new method based on particle swarm
optimization is proposed to identify the best switching angles
with the dual objectives of harmonic suppression and output
voltage regulation. The advantages of fundamental frequency
harmonic elimination and swarm intelligence are combined
to improve the quality of output voltage of multilevel inverters. The validity of the proposed method is proved through
various simulation results.
Keywords Multilevel converter Diode-clamped
multilevel inverter Harmonic elimination Particle swarm
optimization

1 Introduction
In recent years, static power converters have received more
and more attention because their usefulness for a wide range
of industrial and utility systems applications. These converters produce current and voltage distorted waveforms.
The resulted harmonic pollution causes losses in power
equipment, poor power factor, and electromagnetic inference.
S. Barkat (B)
Laboratoire dAnalyse des Signaux et Systmes (LASS),
Msila University, Ichbillia Road, Msila 28000, Algeria
e-mail: sa_barkati@yahoo.fr
E. M. Berkouk M. S. Boucherit
Laboratoire de Commande des Processus (LCP),
Ecole Nationale Suprieure Polytechnique,
10 Hassen Badi Avenue, 16200 El Harrach, Algiers, Algeria
e-mail: emberkouk@yahoo.fr
M. S. Boucherit
e-mail: boucherit@yahoo.fr

For mitigating the aforementioned problems, multilevel

power conversion, first proposed by Nabae [1], is one of the
more promising techniques for reduced harmonic distortion
in the output waveform. Multilevel inverters incorporate a
topological structure that allows a wanted output voltage to be
synthesized from among set of dc voltages sources. Various
multilevel topologies have been proposed. Diode-clamp, flying capacitor and cascade inverters are some of the examples.
Compared with the traditional two-level voltage inverter, the
primary advantage of multilevel inverters is their smaller output voltage step, which results in high power quality, lower
harmonic components, better electromagnetic compatibility,
and lower switching losses [2]. Today, multilevel inverters
are extensively used in high-power applications with medium
voltage levels such as active power filters, static var compensators, unified power flow controllers, electrical vehicles, and
industrial motor drives areas [35].
Several modulation and control strategies have been
adopted for multilevel inverters with a primary goal to shape
the harmonic spectrum of the output voltage waveform. The
proposed control strategies include among others multilevel
sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) and space-vector
modulation (SVM) [6,7]. However, switching losses and
voltage total harmonic distortion (THD) are still relatively
high for these proposed strategies [8]. Multilevel selective
harmonic elimination provides the opportunity to eliminate
the lower dominant harmonics and filter the higher residual
frequencies. Typically, this method yields good harmonic
performance with fundamental frequency switching which
reduce switching losses significantly. The main difficulty
for selective harmonic elimination method is to compute
the switching angles. Numerous approaches are available in
searching the optimal switching angles. Traditional Newton
Raphson method is widely used in this area but can not be
applicable for a large number of switching angles if good

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initial guesses are not available [8]. A second approach uses

block-pulse functions [9]. Harmonic elimination is achieved
via the replacement of nonlinear transcendental equations
with a set of systems of linear equations.
Another method based on symmetric polynomials and
results theory have been used to solve nonlinear transcendental harmonic elimination equations [10,11]. However, this
method reaches its practical limitations when the number of
switching angle increases. An alternative technique based
on genetic algorithm (GA) optimization for harmonic elimination problem has been reported in [12,13]. In references
[1416], a hybrid method based on genetic algorithm and
direct search optimization technique is proposed in order to
reduce the computational burden.
This paper proposes to use particle swarm optimization
(PSO) to compute the optimal switching angles for multilevel
inverters. The diode-clamped multilevel inverter (DCMI) is
chosen as an example.
Although PSO shares many similarities with GA, the classical PSO does not have genetic operators such as crossover and mutation which leads to easy implementation of
this method. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a
relatively new optimization algorithm proposed firstly by
Kennedy and Eberhart [17]. The core idea behind PSO is
to emulate the social behavior of a flock of birds seeking
food. This stochastic optimization procedure is based on
the movement and intelligence of swarms, which are able
to solve the optimization problems by social interactions.
The most attractive feature of the PSO is the fact that no
gradient information of the objective function is required.
Successful applications of PSO to several optimization problems, like PID controller optimization [18] and feed forward neutral network design [19] have demonstrated its
potential.
The paper is arranged as follows. A general description of
an n-level DCMI is established in Sect. 2. The Fourier analysis of output voltage is presented in Sect. 3. The design of
objective function is formulated in Sect. 4. In Sect. 5, the proposed minimization technique based on PSO is introduced.
The adopted optimization algorithm is detailed in Sect. 6. To
prove the feasibility of the proposed method, Sect. 7 provides
simulations for 5, 7 and 11-level DCMI. Finally, in Sect. 8
concluding remarks are given.
2 Diode-clamped multilevel inverter structure
Figure 1 illustrates the basic power circuit of one phase
leg of DCMI. Normally, one leg of an n-level DCMI has
2(n 1) main switches (Tki , Tki
with i = 1, . . . , n 1)

with i = 1, . . . , n 1).
and 2(n 1) main diodes (Dki , Dki
In addition, this topology needs 2(n 2) clamping diodes


with i = 1, . . . , n 2). k denotes leg
(Dcki , Dcki
number.

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Electr Eng (2009) 91:221228

Vdc
n 1
Vdc
n 1

Dck(n2)
Dck(n3)

Tk(n1)

Dk(n1)

Tk(n2)

Dk(n2)

Dck2
Dck1 Tk2
Tk1

Vdc

Dck(n2)

Tk1

Dk2
a

Tk2

Dck(n3)

ia

Dk1
Dk1
Dk2

Dck2

Vdc
n 1
Vdc
n 1

T
Dck1k(n2)
1)
Tk(n

Dk(n2)
Dk(n1)

Fig. 1 One leg of an n-level diode-clamped multilevel inverter

Table 1 Switching table of an n-level DCMI
Output voltage Vao

Switch state
Tk1

Tk2

Tk(n2)

Tk(n1)

Vdc /2

Vdc (n 3)/2(n 1)

..
.

..
.

..
.

..
.

..
.

Vdc (n 3)/2(n 1)

Vdc /2

If the neutral point O is considered as the output phase voltage reference point, then the circuit generates n output voltage levels, where n is assumed an odd number greater than
three. This can be possible by connecting in series (n 1) dc
sources to ac side via (n 1) power switches. The maximum
resulting output voltage Vao swings from Vdc /2 to Vdc /2
[20,21].
Assuming that all dc sources have the same voltage
Vdc /(n 1), different switching states provide different output voltages. The lower group switches requires the complementary gating pulses of the upper group of the same number.


is Off. Table 1 lists the voltThat means if Tki is On, Tk(ni)
age output levels possible for one phase of an n-level DCMI.
State condition 1 means that the switch is On, and 0 means
that the switch is Off.
3 Fourier analysis
The DCMI can produce a general quarter-wave symmetric
stepped voltage waveform synthesized by (n 1) equal dc
voltage sources such as the one depicted in Fig. 2.

Electr Eng (2009) 91:221228

223

Vao

Harmonic elimination problem is converted in optimization problem and can be stated formally as follows:
Let Fitness(i ) the objective function, which can be
written as:
Minimize

Vdc
2

n 3
Vdc
2(n1)
Vdc
n1
0

1 2 n1

V
dc
n1
n2

Vdc
2(n1)

3
2



Fitness (i ; i = 1, . . . , (n 1)/2) = w1 V1
(n 1)M/2

M=

By applying Fourier series analysis, the output voltage can

be expressed as
V2k+1 sin(2k + 1)t

n1

2


4Vdc
=
cos (2k + 1) i
(2k + 1) (n 1)

(2)

i=1

i (i = 1, . . . , (n 1)/2) are switching timing angles. They

indicate the On or Off instant of power switches. Not that
only odd harmonics are considered. The even harmonics are
zero due to the symmetry of the output voltage.
When the magnitudes of the Fourier coefficients are normalized with respect to Vdc /(n 1), we obtain:
n1

2


4
=
cos (2k + 1) i
(2k + 1)

(3)

i=1

All switching angles must satisfy the condition

0 < 1 < 2 < < (n1)/2 <

2V ref
(n 1)Vdc

(6)

and wi (i = 1, . . . , (n 1)/2) are positive weights which

can give more importance to impose the fundamental over
harmonic elimination.
With the objective function (5), the PSO technique is used
to find the optimal i (i = 1, . . . , (n 1)/2).

5 Particle swarm optimization

Where V2k+1 is the amplitude of the (2k+1)th harmonic voltage given by

V2k+1

(5)

(1)

k=0

V2k+1

 
 
w j V j


Where M is the modulation index defined as follows:

Fig. 2 Quarter-symmetric stepped-voltage waveform of an n-level

DCMI

(n1)/2


j=2

V
dc
2

Vao (t) =

(4)

Particle swarm optimization is an intelligent algorithm which

relies on exchanging information through social interaction
among particles. The PSO conducts searches using a swarm
of particles randomly generated initially. Each particle i
position pi =

(i = 1 to swarm size) possesses a current
pi1 pi2 . . . pi N and a velocity vi = vi1 vi2 vi N , N
is the dimension of search space. The position of the particle
represents a possible solution of the problem. The velocity
indicates the change in the position from one step to the next.
Each particle memorizes its personal best position (pbesti )
which corresponds to the best fitness value in the searched
places. Each particle can also access to the global best position (gbest) that is the overall best place found by one member
of the swarm. Namely, particles profit from their own experiences and previous experience of other particles during the
exploration, to adjust their velocity, in direction and amount
[22,23]. The concept of a moving particle is illustrated in
Fig. 3.
The velocity of each particle can be updated iteratively
according to the following rule:
vi (k + 1) = wvi (k) + c1r1 ( pbesti pi (k))
+ c2 r2 (gbest pi (k))

4 Objective function design

The task here is to choose the switching angles i (i = 1, . . . ,
(n 1)/2) such that the relative fundamental component V1

is equal to the desired normalized voltage V r e f /Vdc and the
(n 3)/2 low-order harmonics of Vao (t) are equal to zero.

(7)

Where
vi (k) is the current velocity of particle i at iteration k;
pi (k) is the current position of particle i at iteration k.

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Electr Eng (2009) 91:221228

Personnel best
performance
Global best
performance
Current
position
New position

Current velocity
Fig. 3 Concept of modification of searching points

The inertia weight w governs how much of previous

velocity should be retained from the previous time step. The
acceleration coefficients c1 > 0 and c2 > 0 influence the
maximum size of the step that a particle can take in a single
iteration. r1 and r2 are two independent random sequences
uniformly distributed in [0,1]. These sequences are used to
affect the stochastic nature of the algorithm.
The first term of right-hand side of the velocity update
equation is the inertia velocity of particle, which reflects the
memory behavior of particle. The second term in the velocity update equation is associated with cognition since it only
takes into account the private thinking and own experiences
of particles. This component is a linear attraction toward the
local best position ever found by the given particle. But the
third term in the same equation represents the social collaboration and interaction between the particles. This component
is a linear attraction toward the global best position found by
any particle.
Each particle investigates the search space from its new
local position using the following equation:
pi (k + 1) = pi (k) + vi (k)

(8)

After a number of iterations, the particles will eventually

cluster around the area where fittest solutions are.

6 Implementation of PSO for harmonic elimination

problem
In order to describe the implementation of the PSO in harmonic elimination problem of multilevel inverters, the following pseudo-code is adopted.
Step 1: Initialization
For each particle:



(0)
Initialize the position i (0) = i1 (0) i2 (0) i n1
2
of each particle with random angles that respect the constraints (4);

123


Initialize
the velocity vi (0) = v i1(0)v i2(0) vi

n1
2 (0) of each particle to random values;
Initialize the best fitness Fitness_ pbesti of particle i.
End for
Initialization of the best fitness Fitness_gbest of the
swarm.
Loop
{
For each particle
Step 2: Objective function evaluation
Compute the Fitenessi value of each particle i of the
swarm using the cost function given by (5);
Step 3: Personal best position updating
If Fitenessi < Fitness_ pbesti
Then Fiteness_ pbesti = Fitenessi and pbesti = i
End if
Step 4: Global best position updating
If Fitenessi < Fitness_gbest
Then Fiteness_gbest = Fitenessi and gbest = i
End if
End for
For each particle
Step 5: Position and velocity updating
vi = wvi + c1r1 ( pbesti i ) + c2 r2 (gbest i )
i = i + vi
End for
} Until a sufficiently good fitness value is reached.

7 Simulation results
The proposed PSO based method has been successfully
applied to a number of levels of diode-clamped inverter to
illustrate its feasibility. Our aim is to generate an optimal
control of multilevel inverter for a given value of the modulation index M. The parameter M is incremented in step of
0.001.
The proposed method offers the advantage that does not
require severe parameters tuning. To expedite the search for
an optimal solution, c1 and c2 are set to 1.8, the coefficient
was set to 0.75. The weighted factors: w1 is set to 10 and
wi (i = 2, . . . , (n 1)/2) are set to 1. The number of particles for PSO is 20. The dc source of each multilevel is given
by Vdc = 100(n 1)/2.
To indicate the quality of output voltage, the total line
voltage harmonic distortion is defined as follows:

THD(%) = 100

100
k=1

V1

2
V6k1

(9)

The even and third harmonic and its multiple are not computed in THD because do not appear in the line voltage.

Electr Eng (2009) 91:221228

225

Fig. 4 PSO-harmonic
elimination technique for 5-level
DCMI a Switching angles.
b Cost function c Output
voltage relatively to the middle
point O for M = 0.85 d Lowest
line voltage THD e Line output
voltage for M = 0.85
f Harmonic spectrum of line
voltage for M = 0.85

The optimal switching angles for 5,7 and 11-level DCMI

are shown in Figs. 4a, 5a and 6a. It is important to note that
the proposed minimization method finds all sets of solutions.
According to the simulation results, the solution is not con-

tinuous for some modulation index and there are several sets
of solutions for some other modulation index.
As seen on Figs. 4b, 5b and 6b, any solution that yields a
cost function less than 0.001 is accepted. We clearly notice

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Electr Eng (2009) 91:221228

Fig. 5 PSO-harmonics
elimination technique for 7-level
DCMI (a) Switching angles
(b) Cost function (c) Output
voltage relatively to the middle
point O for M = 0.85
(d) Lowest line voltage THD
(e) Line output voltage for
M = 0.85 (f) Harmonic
spectrum of line voltage
for M = 0.85

that the number of solutions for each M increases or decreases

in according to precision constraint value by which solutions
are calculated.

123

Using the optimal switching angles calculated above, simulations have been conducted to verify that the fundamental
frequency switching can achieve high control performance.

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227

Fig. 6 PSO-harmonic
elimination technique for
11-level DCMI (a) Switching
angles (b) Cost function
(c) Output voltage relatively to
the middle point O for
M = 0.85 (d) Lowest line
voltage THD (e) Line output
voltage for M = 0.85
(f) Harmonic spectrum of line
voltage for M = 0.85

The optimized staircase voltages are depicted in Figs. 4c,

5c and 6c. From the above simulation results, it can be derived
that the increased number of levels results in a better approximation to a sinusoidal wave form and provides the opportunity to eliminate more harmonics content.

The THD is different for different solution sets; therefore, the lowest THD are shown in Figs. 4d, 5d and 6d.
It can be seen that the THD is high for the low modulation index range and decreases when the number of levels
increases.

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Figures 4e, 5e and 6e illustrate the line voltages waveforms when modulation index is M = 0.85. Figures 4f, 5f
and 6f show the first 100 harmonics (FFT) of line voltages.
From the FFT analysis of line voltages, it is seen that all harmonics chosen to be eliminated and the third harmonic and
its multiple have been strongly eliminated as expected.

8 Conclusion
In this paper, a novel strategy to eliminate harmonics in multilevel inverters has been described which exploits the swarm
intelligence. Particle swarm optimization is used to improve
the harmonic elimination technique for multilevel inverters,
which exhibits clear advantages in term of low switching frequency and high output quality. This study has shown that the
particle swarm optimization is more suitable for multilevel
inverters optimal control design. This optimization algorithm
is simple to implement, effective and inexpensive in term of
memory and time required.

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