By an instantaneous power characteristics analysis of cascaded sub-modules of each arm in the special matrix topology

a control strategy for novel modular multilevel matrix converters based on submodule instantaneous power tracking is proposed. The capacitor voltage DC deviation and differential-frequency voltage ripple mixed is fed back direct and controlled as a whole in the balancing control loop between arms

the high frequency circulation being injected by tracking the instantaneous power amplitude envelope to solve converters' application range restriction from reactive power distribution and too high a differential-frequency voltage ripple. Under the constraint of a single circulation path

the output-frequency circulation superimposed adjusts the nonzero sequence active power deviation between arms

while realizing interphase balancing control by the input-frequency circulation. The mode of circulation synthesis does not affect control independence and is easy to carry out. The arm current loop can realize the decoupling control of both AC-side current and internal circulation without complicated vector transformation. Finally

the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme under different working conditions is verified by experimental results. This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(No. 51541708).