AbstractInduction motors are being used in greater

numbers throughout a wide variety of industrial and commercial

applications because it provides many benefits and reliable
device to convert the electrical energy into mechanical motion. In
some applications, its desired to control the speed of the
induction motor. Because of the physics of the induction motor
the preferred method of controlling its speed is to vary the
frequency of the AC voltage driving the motor. In recent years,
with the microcontroller incorporated into an appliance, it
becomes possible to use it to generate the variable frequency AC
voltage to control the speed of the induction motor.
This study investigates the microcontroller based variable
frequency power inverter. The microcontroller provides the
variable frequency pulse width modulation (PWM) signal that
controls the applied voltage on the gate drive, which provides the
required PWM frequency with less harmonics at the output of
the power inverter.
The fully controlled bridge voltage source inverter has been
implemented with semiconductors power devices isolated gate
bipolar transistor (IGBT), and the PWM technique has been
employed in this inverter to supply the motor with AC voltage.
The proposed drive system for three & single phase power
inverter is simulated using Matlab/Simulink. The Matlab
simulation results of the proposed system were achieved with
different SPWM. From the result, a stable variable frequency
inverter over wide range has been obtained and a good
agreement has been found between the simulation and hardware
of a microcontroller based single phase inverter.

Index Terms Microcontroller, Induction motor, three and
single phase power inverter.
I. INTRODUCTION
The variable frequency inverters are used in wide applications
especially threephase induction motor drive traction and it is
popular in many high power industrial applications, such as
speed and torque control. Single phase
induction motor (SPIM), which has a common using in
residential applications, domestic such as dishwashers, cloths
dryers, fans, pumps, etc. ,when the SPIMs are preferred due to
the greater availability of single phase power supply. Also

Khaled A. Madi is with Department of Electrical and Electronics
Engineering. Engineering Academy, Tajoura-Libya. Phone:
218-92-7707512; kaledmadi2002@yahoo.com
Mohammad E. SalemAbozaed is with Department of Electrical and
Electronics Engineering. Engineering Academy, Tajoura Libya. Phone:
218-92- 92823; mabozaed@yahoo.com
this system can be used in other application such as: electric
vehicle, variable speed equipments, and AC variable
frequency power source used in the laboratory, where there
are many experiments require the use of different AC sources
in terms of the voltage amplitude and frequency. Thus, it can
be very useful in the laboratory for testing appliances,
products, and equipment. It may also be helpful in an
automated production line for checking the Device Under Test
(DUT) in a specified operating range of voltage and frequency
[1].

Various researches on the control of the variable frequency
inverter have been presented as low-cost, high-performance,
and the development was made in several areas, such as:
microelectronics, allowing the use of software instead of
hardware to solve complex control problems for an affordable
price; power semiconductors technology, providing powerful,
fast and easy to drive switches; control algorithms, which
control the inverter output and reduce the harmonic. As a
result of those efforts, AC motor drives are today very
interesting as an alternative to DC motor based systems.
With the increasing demands for high-quality power
sources, and reduction of harmonic distortion, a PWM inverter
has been used as a key element for a high-performance power
conversion system for critical loads such as computers,
medical equipment and communication systems [2].
Recently, microcontrollers and digital signal processors
(DSP) are used as advanced control techniques. Many
researchers developed the software for the control system,
which confirmed the high quality of the control based on
microcontroller techniques [3] and to provide additional real
time processing throughput in an inverter operation,
microcontrollers and DSP features minimize the CPU's
overhead in an interrupt intensive application [4].
Motorola MC68HC11 microcontroller has been chosen for
this implementation because it is easy to develop, instantly
response, high performance, high speed, and low-power chip
with multiplexed capable of running at up to 2 MHZ.

Traditionally, variable speed operation of a single phase
induction motor suffers from large harmonic and limited
speed, therefore the system has been built using voltage
control method with semiconductors power devices IGBT and
PWM techniques have been implemented to avoid the large
harmonics.
Simulation of a single phase and three phase variable
frequency inverter, which has been constructed on
Khaled A. Madi Ali and Mohammad E. Salem Abozaed
Microcontroller Based Variable Frequency
Power Inverter
Proceedings of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2010 Vol II,
IMECS 2010, March 17 - 19, 2010, Hong Kong
ISBN: 978-988-18210-4-1
ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online)
IMECS 2010

matlab/simulink software to examine its capability to achieve
sinusoidal waveformwith variable frequency to use as single
phase and three phase variable frequency power supply.
The Matlab simulation results of the proposed system were
achieved with different PWM frequencies this systemcan be
considered as high power variable frequency voltage source
inverter, with fewer harmonics. From the result, a stable AC
voltage with variable amplitude and variable frequency over
wide range have been obtained and a good agreement has been
found between the simulation and hardware of a single phase
inverter.
II. PAST WORKS
Various convert topologies have been compared by
Ba-thunya et al [5], and he concluded that, among the
converter topologies, the adjusted frequency PWM inverter is
the best choice for single phase induction motor drives.
Chomat and Lipo [6], considered a system connected to a
single-phase supply, the output portion of the converter
consisting of two IGBT switches, generates a PWM output
supplying one or both stator windings of a single-phase
machine. The variable speed operation is characterized by the
fact that the both stator windings are fed from the inverter. The
phase shift between the currents in the main and auxiliary
windings of the machine is maintained by means of an AC
capacitor connected in series with the auxiliary winding. The
generation of the triggering pulses for the solid-state switches
and the state of the output relay are controlled by a single-chip
microcontroller.
J iangmin Yao [7], has implemented the PIC17C756
microcontroller in a single phase induction motor adjustable
speed drive control with hardware setup and software program
in C code. The main feature used in this microcontroller was
its peripherals to realize pulse width modulation in the single
phase motor control. Furthermore, one chip and
re-programmable ROM replaces the conventional
complicated circuit solution. He concluded that this brought
low cost, small size and flexibility to change the control
algorithm without changes in hardware. The problem of this
microcontroller was that it had no dead band register and only
had a three PWM output. Therefore, additional logic analogue
circuits were added to generate their complement signals and
to generate dead time in order to avoid the overlapping of turn
on for both upper and lower switches.
Bashi, et al [8], had developed the single phase induction
motor adjustable speed control using MC68HC11E-9
microcontroller. They programmed the microcontroller to
vary the pulse width variation that controls the duty cycle of
the DC chopper. The inverter receives the DC signal from the
chopper and converted to AC power to feed the motor. Their
drive system can be used to achieve speed control of a
single-phase induction motor with wide speed range, but their
system could be technically possible and economical, but the
operation of the drive is not optimal throughout the entire
speed range and the significant torque ripple which may arise
in some operating points.
In this work, the single phase variable frequency inverter
has been implemented. The microcontroller has been
programmed to vary the frequency of the output power
inverter.
III. MATERIALS AND METHODS
Single phase variable frequency inverter consists of full
bridge diode rectifier is fed from 110Vac power supply; the
rectifier bridge is used to convert the AC supply voltage to a
155.56Vdc voltage. The output voltage of the rectifier bridge
is smoothed using a capacitor which helps to remove its
ripples. Then the fixed DC voltage is fed to the single bridge
IGBT inverter, which receives the DC voltage and converts it
to AC voltage with variable frequency to feed the motor under
control.
The microcontroller has been programmed to vary the
frequency of the PWM signal that controls the frequency of
the voltage applied at the gate drives, and as a result of this; we
can control the frequency of the inverter.



Fig. 1. Block diagramof the system

Three phase variable frequency inverter: The 110Vac 3
phase power supply is converted to into fixed DC voltage by
used three phase full bridge diode rectifier. The harmonics are
filtered out by an LC filter to provide a smooth DC voltage,
which is then applied to the inverter input.
The inverter consists essentially of six power IGBT, this
inverter converts the DC link voltage into an adjustable
three-phase AC voltage. The PWM control scheme used to
control the inverter output voltage and frequency, by
modulating the on and off times of power switches.

A. Simulation of the System
Matlab/Simulink software has been used as a tool to
simulate the circuit which consists of full bridge rectifier, and
inverter circuit. Figure 1 shows the complete systemsingle
phase inverter, whereas Figure 2 shows the complete system
of three phase inverter.
In the steady state, the motor can be simulated as R-L
lumped circuit without loss of accuracy. The resistance R
reflects the losses in the stator and rotor cores and the
inductance for the winding. An experiment is carried out to
Proceedings of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2010 Vol II,
IMECS 2010, March 17 - 19, 2010, Hong Kong
ISBN: 978-988-18210-4-1
ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online)
IMECS 2010

measure R and L and the measured values were used in the
simulation on Matlab/Simulink [3].




Fig. 2. Block diagramfor single phase inverter simulation
circuit


Fig. 3. Block diagramfor three phase inverter simulation
circuit

B. Experimental Setupt
In this study, the full bridge rectifier has been used to
convert the AC supply to a DC voltage. A capacitor and an
inductor are connected to form a smoothing filter. The output
of the rectifier is the input to the inverter, which receives the
smooth DC voltage and converts it to AC power to get the
variable frequency power source.
The microcontroller-based control system hardware has
been programmed to vary the frequency of the PWM signal
that controls the frequency of the power inverter.
The PWM module gets two inputs duty cycle and
frequency the frequency is configurable within range 20Hz-2
KHz and the duty cycle can be ranged from 0% to 100%. In
order to use the output compare function as PWM generator,
the frequency is converted from Hz to counts according to the
following equation.

s .
FREQHZ
FREQCNT
5 0
= (1)

Where, 0.5s is the one cycle period of microcontroller.

The PWM signals of the MCU are applied to the gate of
IGBT through gate drive; the gate driver provides isolation,
low impedance and high current supply to drive the IGBTs.
By controlling the input voltage to the ADC, we can control
the output frequency of the Microcontroller, since this input
analogue voltage is converting to 8 bit digital signals, with
resolution 20mV/step.
Under no-load condition, the output of the power inverter
was smooth, and when this output voltage was fed to the
single phase induction motor, the motor stared run and the
response of the drive system was as expected.

C. Simulation & experimental result
1) Simulation result: The Matlab Simulation Results for the
single phase variable frequency at steady state is shown in
Figure 4, while the experiment result is shown in Figure 5.


Fig. 4. Load voltage and current for single phase inverter
during simulation



Fig.5. Load voltage and current for three phase inverter during
simulation

2) Experimental result: The microcontroller based single
phase variable inverter system has been implemented
experimentally. Figure 6 shows the output PWM pulses of the
MCU, which are adjustable pulse width and frequency.
Whereas, the output voltage and current of the single phase
system fed an induction motor are shown in Figure 7 and
Figure 8 respectively.

Proceedings of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2010 Vol II,
IMECS 2010, March 17 - 19, 2010, Hong Kong
ISBN: 978-988-18210-4-1
ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online)
IMECS 2010



Fig. 6. Firing signal for the single phase inverter




Fig. 7. Load voltage during experiment



Fig. 8. Load Current during experiment

By comparing the output voltage and current waveforms of
the simulation and experimental results we can observed good
agreement which has been found between the simulation and
experimental results with respect to voltage and current
waveform shape.
IV. CONCLUSION
The single phase and three phase variable frequency
inverter is simulated using Matlab/Simulink software. The
stable AC power source with variable amplitude and variable
frequency over wide range has been obtained.
The M68HC11E-9 microcontroller based single phase
variable frequency power inverter has been introduced and it
can be successfully achieved. Results of the experiment have
been obtained for the microcontroller, which offers reliable
and low-cost solutions for single phase variable frequency
inverter and good agreement was found between simulation
and hardware results.
In general, the AC-DC-AC conversion was successful, on
the other side, some overshoot were found due to suspected
causes such as the control algorithm used in the
microcontroller and harmonic content at the inverter output.
However, good results confirming the initial intention for
design.
REFERENCES
[1] K. Low, A DSP-Based Variable AC Power Source, Instrumentation
and Measurement, IEEE Transactions, Vol. 47, NO. 4, 1998, pp:
992-996.
[2] S. K. Chung, H. B. Shin and H. W. Lee, Precision Control of
Single-Phase PWM Inverter Using PLL Compensation, in
Proceedings of the 2005 Electric Power Applications, IEE, Vol. 152,
pp. 429 - 436.
[3] L. Rimifriu, M. Lucanu, C, Aghion, O. Ursaru, Control With
Microcontroller For PWM Single-Phase Inverter, IEEE, "Gh. Asachi"
Technical University of Iasi, Faculty of Electronics and
Telecommunications, Bd. Carol I, no. 11, Iasi, 700537 Romania. 2003.
[4] W. Bacharowski, Microcontrollers in Variable Frequency Inverters,
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13-15.
[5] A. S. Ba-thunya, R.Khopkar, K. Wei and H. A. Toliyat, Single Phase
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[6] M. Chomat and T. A. Lipo, "Adjustable-Speed Single-Phase IM Drive
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[7] J. Yao, "Single Phase Induction Motor Adjustable Speed Control Using
DSP and Microcontroller," Course Project for ECE734 Fall Semester
at UW-Madison, 2000, pp. 1-7.
[8] S. M. Bashi, I. Aris and S.H. Hamad Development of Single Phase
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Proceedings of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2010 Vol II,
IMECS 2010, March 17 - 19, 2010, Hong Kong
ISBN: 978-988-18210-4-1
ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online)
IMECS 2010