Microcontroller Based Single Phase Inverter

Mohamed Y. Tarnini
Department of Electrical Engineering
Beirut Arab University
Al-Debieh Lebanon
m.tarnini@bau.edu.lb

Abstract_ This paper presents a new scheme of Pure

Sinwave Inverters using Pic-18F4620 microcontroller to
eliminate the most amount of current harmonics that flows
through the whole circuit, and to obtain pure sinwave
current at the output load side. The proposed inverter,
with lossless harmonic power, gives pure sinusoidal output
voltage and current. It is aimed to be used with AC
machines, sensitive appliances and home appliances even
in the absence of main power supply. Also it can be used in
high voltage direct current transmission line and for
adjustable speed drives. The proposed microcontroller
based inverter converts 12 or 24 V DC input to a pure
undistorted 220V or 110V AC output. The total harmonic
distortion of this inverter is less than 5% and it meets the
IEEE standards, knowing that the most traditional
inverters contain harmonics around 20% or more, which
are useless to operate sensitive machines such as printers,
faxes, photocopier machines and tripping circuits etc.
Keywordsharmonic reduction, total harmonic distortion
(THD, pulse width modulation (PWM)
I.
INTRODUCTION
Inverter is an electronic machine used to convert direct current
DC to alternating current AC. Inverters are used in a wide
range of applications, from small switching power supplies to
large electric utility applications that transport high power.
The aim of this work is to develop a single phase inverter for
solar home lighting, to observe the output voltage waveform
under various load condition, to find the efficiency of the
inverter and to find the Total Harmonic Distortion THD of the
proposed inverter [1].
Solar energy is pollution-free energy, unlike oil or gas sources,
which produces greenhouse gases. In order to use the
renewable sources of energy like as solar cells or windturbine, one needs a circuit to convert DC voltage into AC
voltage correctly with total harmonic distortion dont exceeds
the international standards for low voltages which is not more
than 5% [2] in other word it reflects the need of pure sinwave
inverter.
Normally the output waveform of the traditional inverter is a
modified square wave which produces losses and eventually

will damage the rotational and sensitive appliances. A lowpass filter (LC) is normally connected at the inverter output to
reduce the high frequency harmonics. This new inverter uses
18F4620 Pic-microcontroller based control technique forcing
the output waveform to follow proposed pure sinusoidal
waves stored in the microcontroller memory in the form of
lookup table using 16-Level pulse width modulation PWM
technique. The higher the controller frequency is the more
pure sinusoidal wave output. Fig. 1 shows the overall circuit
of the laboratory 1KVA prototype, the output is measured and
tested under variable inductive loads ranges between 100 and
1000watt, we found that the output wave distortion meet IEEE
standards for any value of absorbed power. And the current is
forced to follow the voltage to produce power factor near
unity, thus the total output losses is decreased more and more.

Control circuit

Filter circuit and output transformer

Fig. 1 Overall real inverter circuit

The simplicity of the design makes it highly user-friendly and

easy to use. It is cost-efficient and has light weight compared
with other inverters. We can produce this inverter for power
ranges between 1000w and 5000watt for low voltages. A
1KVA laboratory prototype is built and tested, the output
current and voltage waves is captured by an oscilloscope and
we found that the proposed scheme gives pure sinwave current
with very small phase difference with the output voltage
IIPWM TECHNIQUE
The 16-Level microcontroller based single phase inverter is
based on Unipolar PWM technique. This technique provides a
way to decrease the THD of load current by using an

978-1-4673-5820-0/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

appropriate filter at the load side. Generally, it can meet THD

requirements more easily than the square switching scheme.
The unfiltered PWM output will have relatively high THD the
filter of this technique is much easier than others [2]. Fig. 2
shows the electric circuit of Unipolar PWM technique by
using PSIM simulation program.

Fig. 4 shows the output current or voltage across the resistor

load R=10ohms. The total harmonic distortion of the load
current is 4.9%
VR
200

100

-100

-200
0

0.01

0.02

0.03
Time (s)

0.04

0.05

Figure 4 Output resistance voltage (proportion to the load current)

III-

THEORY OF OPERATION OF PROPOSED

TECHNIQUE
The inverter circuit consists of a MOSFET bridge, integrated
gate drive, and additional related circuitry depends on the
chosen type of inverter. The pure sinwave inverter uses
feedback controller to control the output voltage to become
pure sinwave voltage through microcontroller [3]. The block
diagram representing our project is shown in Fig. 5. A current
command is given to the control in the analog to digital gate,
and a digital switching signal is generated after comparing the
input signal by reference sinwave installed in the
microcontroller in the form of Hex-Dec look-up table.
Figure 2 Unipolar PWM across inductive load of 10ohms and 2mH

MOSFET Bridge

DC voltage

The output VAB is switched from either from high to zero or

from low to zero according to the following switching scheme:
S1 is on when Vsin > Vtri
S2 is on when -Vsin < Vtri
S3 is on when -Vsin > Vtri
S4 is on when Vsin < Vtri
The simulation of the output voltage V AB, the individual
voltage VA and VB, reference sin waves and the triangular
carrier are shown in Fig. 3 for an inductive load of R=10ohms
and L=2mH.
negVsin

Vsin

AC
Load

Gate Drive

Switching Signal

Microcontroller

Current Sensor
Command

Fig. 5 Proposed Inverter block diagram

Vtri

1
0.5

These switching signals are sent to the MOSFET Bridge

through a gate driver to correct the final shape and to follow
the proposed reference sinwave as shown in Fig.6

0
-0.5
-1
VA
200
150
100

50
0
-50
VB

i-Actual
i-Reference

200
150
100
50
0
-50
VA-VB
200

100
0
-100
-200
0

0.002

0.004

0.006

0.008

0.01
Time (s)

0.012

0.014

Figure 3 Reference sin waves the triangular carrier wave, switch S4

voltage, switch S2 voltage, and the load voltage VAB

tp
Fig. 6 Proposed comparison techniques

Fig. 6 displays the switching operating principle of

the filter, mainly it contains two curves the smooth sinusoidal
doted curve, i-reference, in fact there is 16-Level references,
and the rough current curve, i-actual. Each reference curve is
produced by a controller, it contains 512 points over one
period installed inside the microcontroller as a look-up table
and each time the microcontroller receives the compensated
current i-actual through Analog to Digital A/D input it
compares this value by the nearest look-up table value for the
same instant to take the correct decision for which MOSFET
should be in work to force the actual curve, i-actual, to be
more nearer to the reference current i-reference. The actual
current i-actual represents the exact load current during
compensation. When the line current below the reference
current, MOSFET 1 is turned on and hence, the capacitor C is
connected to the line circuit in such a way that it increases the
value of the load current above the value of the reference
current and thus discharging the parallel capacitor and visversa [4].
IV-

Fig. 9 Filter coil

Both have the same number of turns so, both under the same
voltage
V=N.d/dt

(1)

Or we split the first side of the transformer on the same iron

core and the same number of turn to keep the transformation
ratio 12/220 is constant. Fig. 10 shows the proposed low-pass
filter (LC) that connected at the inverter output to reduce the
high frequency harmonics.

INDIVIDUAL CIRCUITS

A. MOSFET bridge and filter circuit

Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 shows the circuit diagram and the
real circuit of the MOSFET Bridge takes as input a 12V or 24
DC voltage and the switching signals to produce sinusoidal
output which drives the load (laptop charger, faxes machine
photocopier machine, induction machine sensitive electronic
machines etc...)

Fig. 7 MOSFET electric circuit with filter

Fig. 10 Connection of LC filter

We design two ferrite inductance used as low pass filter to

minimize the oscillations of the harmonics contents on the
output voltage [5]. The real value of the grouped inductance is
0.5mH which gives very good filtration of the output voltage
in most kinds of loads even if it is pure capacitance or
inductance.
B. Transition circuit
Fig. 11 and Fig. 12 shows the transition electric circuit and
transition real board circuit that gives two opposite triggers to
drive the two MOSFETs from a single trigger source coming
from the Microcontroller Pic-18F4620. All integrated subcircuits in the transition circuit need a constant 5volts for this
reason we use 7805 regulator. We use two opto-couplers to
isolate the power circuit from control circuit

Fig. 8 Real connection of MOSFET circuit with filter

Logic level 1

This inverter is based on a half bridge inverter

formed of two MOSFET fired from control circuit sense the
current through a sensor circuit by using feedback controller
to illuminate the harmonics from the output voltage and
current. Practically we use two coils instead of one, the
Magnetic coupled Split the filter coil into two coils in parallel
with same number of turns (N) but in anti-phase connection.
As shown in Fig. 9

Microcontroller

Fig. 11 Electric transition circuit

Where (VA0)1 is the fundamental of the output voltage VA0

Fig. 12 Real connection of transition circuit

C. Microcontroller circuit
Fig.13 shows the microcontroller circuit formed of
Pic18F4620. It takes the input from a feedback circuit shown
in Fig.14 and the one output goes to the transition circuit as
shown in Fig. 8. During normal operation we hear a loud
noise; it can be minimized by using two transistors to pull
down the long trigger to the ground [7]. When the
microcontroller operates correctly, logic level 1 will initiate
the opto-coupler which in its turn, pull down the gate current
on the transistors to the ground. Therefore the trigger will pass
to the gate driver only in case of on-microcontroller

Fig. 15 Look-up table versus feedback voltage

D.
Output voltage by using digital oscilloscope
We build and test 1KVA prototype inverter under different
values of inductive loads; we found that the THD is still less
than 5% which meets IEEE standards. Fig. 16 represents the
output voltage of the proposed inverter by using digital
oscilloscope at R=20 ohms and L=2mH. Fig. 17 gives the
same voltage by using Excel-data sheet.

Fig. 13 Microcontroller circuit

Inverter
220
output

Fig. 16 Output voltage at R=10 ohms and L=2mH

200

Fig. 14 Feedback electric circuit

150

According to our design, 10mA passes through the photo

diode of the Optocoupler calibrate the variable resistance to
adjust the dc output voltage at 2.5v using constant 220v power
supply load this value to the A/D pin of the microcontroller.
We insert a program with 16-Level PWM patterns each with
different modulation index switching between them can keep
the output voltage at 220V, even if increase to 240V or if
decrease to 190V. The variation in the modulation index is
followed by internally changed of the used PWM [2][6] as
shown in Fig. 15. In the closed loop system part, we can vary
the amplitude modulation to obtain the correct desired output
voltage where the amplitude modulation is given by:
ma
ma

peak
peak

amplitude of v control
amplitude of v tri
value of
Vdc

(V A0 )1

(2)

100
50
0
-50
-100
-150
-200

0.01

0.02

0.03

0.04

0.05

0.06

0.07

0.08

0.09

0.1

Fig. 17 Output voltage at R=10 ohms and L=2mH by using Excel

data sheet

The Fourier analysis of the output voltage can be shown by

Fig. 18 where the THD is 4.3%. This result is still
approximately constant for different load power varies up to
900watt. Figure 19 shows the output voltage and the output
current, it is clear that the phase difference between them is

very small and consequently the power factor PF is near unity

and this result is attained due to capacitor filters used in the
proposed prototype knowing that the value of the capacitance
is variable and depends on the chosen wave by the
microcontroller to compare with the feedback signal coming
from the output thus the capacitor voltage cancel the effect of
the inductance voltage even if the inductive load is variable.

Mag (% of Fundamental)

THD=4.3%

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

Figure 18 Fourier analysis of the output resistance voltage

200

Output voltage waveform

150
100

Output current waveform

50
0
-50
-100
-150
-200

0.01

0.02

0.03

0.04

0.05

0.06

0.07

0.08

0.09

0.1

Figure 19 Filtered output voltage and current

VCONCLUSION
Design and implement Microcontroller based single phase
inverter with sinusoidal output voltage waveforms is achieved.
A 1KVA laboratory prototype is built and tested, the output
current and voltage waves is captured by an oscilloscope and
we found that the proposed scheme gives pure sinwave current
with approximate unity PF. The proposed inverter has a lowest
current and voltage ripple, which was 0.3% of the fundamental
voltage and current. The THD is 4.3% and meets the IEEE
519-1992 requirements. The value of the experimental THD of
the proposed inverter is better than that of simulation since the
simulation represents one level inverter but the experimental
work looks for better PWM to minimize the THD as much as
possible. Since there are no extra hardware requirements here,
the scheme is reliable and economical. It is relevant in the
current scenario where lot of importance is given to power
quality as well as interfacing of renewable sources, especially
solar sources, to the power grid.

VI-

REFEENCES

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