First International Power and Energy Coference PECon 2006 November 28-29, 2006, Putrajaya, Malaysia

437

Development of a Single Phase SPWM Microcontroller-Based Inverter

B. Ismail, S.Taib MIEEE, A. R Mohd Saad, M. Isa, C. M. Hadzer
real-time control algorithms without further changes in hardware. It is also low cost and has a small size of control circuit for the single phase full bridge inverter.
II SYSTEM OVERVIEW

Abstract - This paper presents the development of single phase sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) microcontroller-based inverter. The attractiveness of this configuration is the used of a microcontroller to generate sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM) pulses. Microcontroller is able to store the required commands to generate the necessary waveforms to control the frequency of the inverter through proper design of switching pulses. The SPWM technique was used to produce pure sinusoidal wave of voltage and current output. This inverter is designed to be either for stand-alone or for grid connected from a direct supply of photovoltaic (PV) cells. In this paper SPWM switching technique is first reviewed. Subsequently control circuit and power circuit for inverter are discussed. Finally the experimental results are discussed. The 200W designed prototype of the inverter was tested with the resistive load and found that total harmonic distortion (THD) is less than 4 % for voltage and 8 % for current. Keywords-- Sinusoidal pulse width modulation, inverter, microcontroller.
I.

The inverter developed is intended for stand alone operation. Although it is designed for stand alone operation, this single phase inverter may also be arranged so that it could be operated as an inverter parallel to power lines, unity power factor rectifier or static VAR Generator (SVG) [5]-[6]. The block diagram of the whole system is shown in Fig. 1 below.

INTRODUCTION

PWM or sinusoidal pulse width modulation is widely used in power electronics to digitize the power so that a sequence of voltage pulses can be generated by the on and off of the power switches. The pulse width modulation inverter has been the main choice in power electronic for decades, because of its circuit simplicity and rugged control scheme [1]. SPWM switching technique is commonly used in industrial applications [2]. SPWM techniques are characterized by constant amplitude pulses with different duty cycle for each period. The width of this pulses are modulated to obtain inverter output voltage control and to reduce its harmonic content. Sinusoidal pulse width modulation or SPWM is the mostly used method in motor control and inverter application. In this development a unipolar SPWM voltage modulation type [3]-[4] is selected because this method offers the advantage of effectively doubling the switching frequency of the inverter voltage, thus making the output filter smaller, cheaper and easier to implement. Conventionally, to generate this signal, triangle wave as a carrier signal is compared with the sinusoidal wave, whose frequency is the desired frequency. The proposed alternative approach is to replace the conventional method with the use of microcontroller. The use of the microcontroller brings the flexibility to change the
B.Ismail
Vocational Traning Officer at school of electrical system engineering KUKUM and Master Candidate at school of electrical and electronic engineering USM.email:y S.Taib is with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Universiti Sains Malaysia, P Pinang, email:soibe s A.R.Mohd Saad, M.Isa and C.M Hadzer are with Kolej Universiti Kejuruteraan Utara Malaysia.
is

Fig. 1. Inverter system overview

The system consists of microcontroller circuit for generating SPWM pulses, optoisolator or isolation circuit, gate drivers, inverter circuit or full bridge circuit, filter circuit and step up transformer. SPWM signal generated by microcontroller needs to be isolated for protection and safety between a safe and a potentially hazardous environment. The outputs are then fed to gate drivers which contains four independent electrically-isolated MOSFET drivers. The outputs of the gate drivers are then distributed to power switches in full bridge arrangement. The output of the inverter has square waveform due to the switching pattern. In order to get a sine wave signal the LC filter was used to reduce harmonic content. The output then fed to step up transformer to get the required output level.
III.

CONTROL CIRCUIT

To generate the SPWM signal an Atmel AT89C205124PI microcontroller was used. The AT89C2051-24PI is a low voltage, high performance CMOS 8-bit microcomputer with 2K bytes of Flash programmable and erasable read only memory (PEROM). The device is manufactured using Atmel's high density nonvolatile memory technology and is compatible with the industrial standard MCS-5 1 instructions set. It also has two 16-bit timers that deliver the function

1-4244-0273-5/06/$20.00 (C2006 IEEE

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used in this application. By combining a versatile 8 bit CPU with Flash on a monolithic chip, the AT89C205 1 is powerful microcomputer which provides a highly flexible and cost effective solution to many embedded control applications. Fig. 2 presents the AT89C5 1-24PI pins assignment for the control system of SPWM in single phase inverter system.
5V RST VCC

The turn ON and OFF switch 1 (SI) and switch 4 (S4) are controlled by SPWM 1 generated at port 1.7 microcontroller. While the turn ON and OFF switch 2 (S2) and switch 3 (S3) are controlled by SPWM 2 generated at port 1.6 microcontroller. Both SPWM 1 and SPWM 2 used the same control signal generated by the microcontroller. The different is only SPWM 1 signal is leading SPWM 2 by half cycle or 180 degree of the switching signal.
A. Isolation Circuit

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p5 P 1.4 P1 3 P1 2 P 11 Pl 0 P37

SPWM 1

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3OpF

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P32 P 3.3 P34 P34

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The isolation circuit is used to isolate signals for protection and safety between a safe and a potentially hazardous environment. The interfacing of the isolation circuit between digital signals needs to be designed correctly for proper protection. The maximum applied voltage for single phase inverter is 240V, since the microcontroller operates at 5V level it is desired to isolate the control board from higher voltage of the inverter circuit. This can be done by using SFH618A optocoupler. Fig. 5 below shows the optocoupler circuit.

Fig. 2. Pins assignment for the control system of SPWM single phase inverter.

The microcontroller is developed as the controller ci rcuit to make the design simpler, more reliable and the most important one is to reduce their dimensions and compon(ents. Only one component can perform the function of a whole circuit, being dependent on the project to be implemente d by a small standalone microcontroller embedded in the converter system. Fig. 3 below shows the switching strategy and Fiig. 4 shows the MOSFETs firing sequences that are used ini this

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Fig. 5. Isolation circuit

B. Gate Driver

development.

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Basically, there are two fundamental categories for gate drivers. These are high side and low side drivers. High side means the source of MOSFET of the power element can float between ground and high voltage power rail. Low side means the source of the MOSFET is always connected to ground. For the gate drivers to operate as a bootstrap circuit, the Vbs voltage is used to provide the supply to the high side driver circuitry of the gate driver. Vbs is the voltage difference between the Vb and Vs pins on the gate driver IC.

Fig. 3. Switching strategy for single phase inverter

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S1. S4
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Fig. 6. Gate driver circuit

Voutinverter Fig. 4. MOSETls tiring sequences

This supply needs to be in the range of 1OV to 20V to ensure that the gate driver is fully enhanced the power MOSFET. The Vbs supply is the floating supply that sits on the top of the Vs voltage. There are various methods to generate the Vbs supply. One of these is bootstrap method. This method is simple and inexpensive but has some limitations. The duty cycle and the on time are limited by

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the requirement to refresh the charge in the bootstrap capacitor Cbs. Selecting the suitable bootstrap diode is very important. The bootstrap diode must be fast enough to switch the inverter switches. Therefore, an ultra fast diode, UF4001 is used in this circuit. The design of the gate driver with bootstrap supply in the form of bootstrap diode and capacitor is shown in Fig. 6.

resistive load. The amplitude of current waveform is around 435 mA and THD is 7.8%.
SPWM 1

III. POWER CIRCUIT

The power circuit topology chosen is full bridge inverter. Fig. 7 shows the full bridge inverter topology. It consists of DC voltage source or photovoltaic module, four switching elements (MOSFETs), LC filter, transformer and load. The full bridge topology is chosen with considerations that it must be capable of delivering high current at low voltage. This property is important if the inverter is designed for photovoltaic applications.

SPWM 2

Fig. 9. SPWM 1 and SPWM 2 waveform (2V/div) generating pulses from microcontroller
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Fig. 10. Output wxaveform (IOV/div) from single phase inverter before
filter

Fig. 7 Full bridge inverter topology.

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A. LC Filter and Step-up Transformer

transformer is shown in Fig. 8.

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The LC filter is required to reduce harmonic content and to make the signal become sinusoidal. The sinusoidal output signal then fed to step-up transformer to amplify the voltage to proper level. The arrangement of the LC filter and step-up

Fig. I11.

from the inverter

THD =3.7 O

Output voltage waveform (I1OOV/div) with resistive load and

to

load l

Fig. 8. The LC filter and transformer arrangement

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

Tektronix TPS 2014, four channel digital storage oscilloscope was used to measure the experimental results. The experimental result from microcontroller output port is shown in Fig. 9. SPWM 1 is output from port 1.7 and SPWM 2 is output from port 1.6 microcontrollers. SPWM 1 is leading SPWM 2 by half cycle of the switching signal. Fig. 10 shows the waveform of the output of the inverter before the filter. Fig. 11 shows the output voltage waveform from single phase inverter with resistive load. The waveform is pure sinusoidal with amplitude around 240 Vrms, 50Hz and THD is around 3.7 %. Fig. 12 shows the output current waveform from single phase inverter with
Fig. 12. Output current wxaxveform (200mA/dix) wxith resistixve load and
THD =7.8 O

IV. CONCLUSION

The single phase SPWM microcontroller-based 200W inverter is designed and tested. It gives a good result for the solar panel application. It was found that the THD is less than 4 00 for voltage and 800 for current which comply with IEEE (519-1992) standard. In order to achieve a much better performance, several improvements are being made and the work is in progress.

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VI. REFERENCES
[1] [2]
[3]
Tchamdjau, Javad Maria D. Bellar, Tzong-Shiann Wu, Aristide Mahdavi and M. Ehsani, " A Review of Soft-switched DC-AC Converter," IEEE trans. On Industry Appl, vol. 43, no. 4, pp 847-858, 1998. Muhammad H. Rashid. "Power Electronics; Circuit's Devices and Applications",Third Edition, Prentice Hall 2004. L. Mihalache. "DSP Control Method of Single -Phase Inverters for UPS Applications ". IEEE Trans. On Industry Application. 2002, pp 590-595. N. Mohan, T.M.Undeland, W.P.Robbins, " Power Electronic-Converters, Applications and Design", Second edition, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1995. N Kutkut. Deepakraj m. Divan et. al. ," An Improved Full-Bridge ZeroVoltage Switching PWM Converter Using a Two-Inductor Rectifieir IEEE Trans. On Industry Appl. Vol. 31 no. 1, 1995. J. Sutanto." Losses Analysis of DC/DC Converter Based on 3 Level NPC ZVS Inverter", Masters Thesis Project,Electrical Engineering Dept. 1999. IEEE Recommended Practice and Requirements for Harmonic Control in Electrical Power System, IEEE Standard 519-1992, 1992.

Abdul Rahman Bin Mohd Saad was born in Alor Setar Kedah. He received his B. Eng(Hons) and M. sc from USM in 1989 and 2001 respectively. He is lecturer in school of computer and communication KUKUM since 2002. Research interests in embedded system and microcontroller applications. He now is Dean at H KUKi OM. engineering centre,
,

[4] [5] [6]

[7]

VI. BIOGRAPHIES
Baharuddin bin Ismail
from
UTM

was
in

born
1976.

in
He

Pendang, Kedah, Malaysia

engineering

received his B.Eng (Hons)

in

in
he

electrical
From

1999.

Nov 1999 to Dec 2002

position
as a

held

the
at
is

Muzamir Bin Isa received his B.Eng in Electrical Engineering from UTM, Skudai, Johor, Malaysia in 2001. After two years of working experience with Telekom Research & Development Sdn Bhd, in Serdang, Selangor, he jaoints KUKUM as Vocational Training Officer. After 6 months, he started his graduate studies in 2003 at Tun Hussein Onn University College (KUITTHO) for M.Eng degree in electrical power engineering. He has been with KUKUM as a lecturer since December, 2004. He is lecturer of School of Electrical Engineering in KUKUM. Muzamir is a Deputy Dean in students affairs and alumni. His research interests include renewable energy, fuel cell engineering, lightning protection system and high voltage
engineering.

electrical

engineer

Malayawata Steel Bhd.

training officier

He
at

now

vocational

school

of

e lecica

~snce
his

system engineering,

KUKUM

2003 and

currently working
in power

towards

master

renewable energy (photovoltaic) at school of electrical and electronic engineering USM.

Soib Bin Taib received Universiti Sains Malaysia
as

degree

electronic for

his
in

BSc

from
in

1984. Worked

1985. Obtained MSc and PhD degrees

from Bradford

System Engineer

at

PERNAS NEC

1990 respectively. Attached to the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, USM as the head of Electrical Power
Program.
Research
interest
in

University

UK

in

1986 and

Power

Electronic and Drives, Experts Systems and currently involved in the development of Renewable Energy System.

Che Mat Hadzer Mahmud received his BSc and Jr degrees in electronic engineering from Institute Technology Bandung, Indonesia in 1976. After two years of working experience with Radio & TV Malaysia, he joint USM as a fellow in Academic Staff Training Scheme in 1978. He then started his graduate studies in 1978 at Salford University for MSc degree and moved to UMIST in 1979 for PhD in electronic control engineering and control engineering respectively. He has been with USM as a lecturer since 1984. He is Associate Professor of School of Electrical & Electronic Eng, USM Engineering Campus, Nibong Tebal. Che Mat Hadzer is Program Chairman for Electronic Engineering. He is now a Professor at KUKUM. His research interests include Electronic Control Engineering, Power Quality and Renewable Energy.