World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology

International Journal of Electrical and Information Engineering

Vol:7, No:4, 2013

Precision Control of Single-Phase PWM

Inverter Using M68HC11E Microcontroller
Khaled A. Madi
Various researches on the control of the variable frequency
Abstract–Induction motors are being used in greater numbers inverter have been presented as low-cost, high-performance,
throughout a wide variety of industrial and commercial applications and the development was made in several areas, such as:
because it provides many benefits and reliable device to convert the microelectronics, allowing the use of software instead of
electrical energy into mechanical motion. In some application it’s
hardware to solve complex control problems for an affordable
desired to control the speed of the induction motor. Because of the
physics of the induction motor the preferred method of controlling its price; power semiconductors technology, providing powerful,
speed is to vary the frequency of the AC voltage driving the motor. In fast and easy to drive switches; control algorithms, which
recent years, with the microcontroller incorporated into an appliance control the inverter output and reduce the harmonic. As a
International Science Index, Electrical and Information Engineering Vol:7, No:4, 2013 waset.org/Publication/6698

it becomes possible to use it to generate the variable frequency AC result of those efforts, AC motor drives are today a very
voltage to control the speed of the induction motor. interesting as an alternative to DC motor based systems.
This study investigates the microcontroller based variable
With the increasing demands for high-quality power
frequency power inverter. the microcontroller is provide the variable
frequency pulse width modulation (PWM) signal that control the sources, and reduction of harmonic distortion a PWM inverter
applied voltage on the gate drive, which is provides the required has been used as a key element for a high-performance power
PWM frequency with less harmonics at the output of the power conversion system for critical loads such as computers,
inverter. medical equipment and communication systems [2].
The fully controlled bridge voltage source inverter has been Microcontrollers and digital signal processors (DSP) have
implemented with semiconductors power devices isolated gate
been available in recent years; applications of advanced
bipolar transistor (IGBT), and the PWM technique has been
employed in this inverter to supply the motor with AC voltage. control techniques have been reported, many researchers
The proposed drive system for three & single phase power inverter developed the software for the control system, which
is simulated using Matlab/Simulink. The Matlab Simulation Results confirmed the high quality of the control based on
for the proposed system were achieved with different SPWM. From microcontroller techniques [3] and to provide additional real
the result a stable variable frequency inverter over wide range has time processing throughput in an inverter operation, these
been obtained and a good agreement has been found between the
features minimize the CPU's overhead in an interrupt intensive
simulation and hardware of a microcontroller based single phase
inverter. application [4].
Motorola MC68HC11 microcontroller has been chosen for
Keywords—Power, inverter, PWM, microcontroller. this implementation because it is easy to development,
instantly response, high performance, high speed and low-
I. INTRODUCTION power chip with multiplexed capable of running at up to 2
MHZ.
T HE variable frequency inverters are used in wide
applications especially three phase induction motor drive
traction and it is has a popular in many high power industrial
Traditionally, variable speed operation of a single phase
induction motor is suffer from large harmonic and limited
applications, such as speed and torque control. Single phase speed, therefore the system has been built using voltage
induction motor (SPIM), which has a common using in control method with semiconductors power devices IGBT and
residential applications, domestic such as dishwashers, cloth to avoid the large harmonics PWM techniques has been
dryers, fans, pumps, etc. ,when the SPIMs are preferred due implemented.
to the greater availability of single phase power supply. Also Simulation of a single phase and three phase variable
this system can be used in other application such as: electric frequency inverter, which has been constructed on
vehicle, variable speed equipment, and AC variable frequency matlab/simulink software to examine its capability to a chive
power source used in the laboratory, where there are many sinusoidal waveform with variable frequency to use as single
experiments require the use of different AC sources in terms phase and three phase variable frequency power supply.
of the voltage amplitude and frequency. Thus, it can be very The Matlab Simulation Results for the proposed system
useful in the laboratory for testing appliances, products, and were achieved with different PWM frequencies this system
equipment. It may also be helpful in an automated production can be considered as high power variable frequency voltage
line for checking the Device Under Test (DUT) in a specified source inverter, with fewer harmonics. From the result, a
operating range of voltage and frequency [1]. stable AC voltage with variable amplitude and variable
frequency over wide range has been obtained and a good
agreement has been found between the simulation and
hardware of a single phase inverter.
Khaled A. Madi is with Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Academy Tajoura, Tajoura, Tripoli, Libya (Kaledmadi2002@yahoo.com).

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 World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
International Journal of Electrical and Information Engineering
Vol:7, No:4, 2013

II. PAST WORKS to AC voltage with variable frequency to feed the motor under
Various convert topologies have been compared by Ba- control.
thunya et al [5], and he concluded that, among the converter The microcontroller has been programmed to vary the
topologies, the adjusted frequency PWM inverter is the best frequency of the PWM signal that controls the frequency of
choice for single phase induction motor drives. the voltage applied at the gate drives, and as a result of this;
Chomat and Lipo [6], considered a system connected to a we can control the frequency of the inverter.
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
International Science Index, Electrical and Information Engineering Vol:7, No:4, 2013 waset.org/Publication/6698

microcontroller. Fig. 1 Block diagram of the system

Jiangmin Yao [7], has implemented the PIC17C756
microcontroller in a single phase induction motor adjustable Three phase variable frequency inverter: The 110Vac 3
speed drive control with hardware setup and software program phase power supply is converted to into fixed DC voltage by
in C code. The main feature used in this microcontroller was used three phase full bridge diode rectifier. The harmonics are
its peripherals to realize pulse width modulation in the single filtered out by an LC filter to provide a smooth DC voltage,
phase motor control. Furthermore, one chip and re- which is then applied to the inverter input.
programmable ROM replaces the conventional complicated The inverter consists essentially of six power IGBT, this
circuit solution. He concluded that this brought low cost, small inverter converts the DC link voltage into an adjustable three-
size and flexibility to change the control algorithm without phase AC voltage. The PWM control scheme used to control
changes in hardware. The problem for this microcontroller the inverter output voltage and frequency, by modulating the
was that it had no dead band register and only had a three on and off times of power switches.
PWM output. Therefore, additional logic analogue circuits
A. Simulation of the System
were added to generate their complement signals and to
generate dead time in order to avoid the overlapping of turn on Matlab/Simulink software has been used as a tool to
for both upper and lower switches. simulate the circuit which consists of; full bridge rectifier, and
Bashi, et al [8], had been developed the single phase inverter circuit. Fig. 1 shows the complete system single phase
induction motor adjustable speed control using MC68HC11E- inverter, whereas Fig. 2 shows the complete system of three
9 microcontroller. They programmed the microcontroller to phase inverter.
vary the pulse width variation that controls the duty cycle of In the steady state the motor can be simulated as R-L
the DC chopper. The inverter receives the DC signal from the lumped circuit without loss of accuracy. The resistance R
chopper and converted to AC power to feed the motor. Their reflects the losses in the stator and rotor cores and the
drive system can be used for a chive speed control of a single- inductance for the winding. An experiment is carried out to
phase induction motor with wide speed range, but their system measure R and L and the measured values were used in the
could be technically possible and economical, but the simulation on Matlab/Simulink [3].
operation of the drive is not optimal throughout the entire
speed range and the significant torque ripple 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 consist of full
bridge diode rectifier is fed from 110Vac power supply; the
rectifier bridge is used to convert the AC supply voltage to a Fig. 2 Block diagram for single phase inverter simulation circuit
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

International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 7(4) 2013 487 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/6698
 World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
International Journal of Electrical and Information Engineering
Vol:7, No:4, 2013

Fig. 3 Block diagram for three phase inverter simulation circuit

B. Experimental Setup
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
International Science Index, Electrical and Information Engineering Vol:7, No:4, 2013 waset.org/Publication/6698

of the rectifier is the input to the inverter, which receives the

Fig. 4 Load voltage and current for single phase inverter during
smooth DC voltage and converts it to AC power to get the simulation
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.

FREQHZ
FREQCNT = (1)
0 .5 μ s

where, 0.5µs 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,
Fig. 5 Load voltage and current for three phase inverter during
low impedance and high current supply to drive the IGBT’s.
simulation
By control the input voltage to the ADC we can control the
output frequency of the Microcontroller, since this input 2) Experimental result: The microcontroller based single
analogue voltage is converting to 8 bit digital signals, with phase variable inverter system has been implemented
resolution 20mV/step. experimentally. Fig. 6 shows the output PWM pulses of the
Under no-load condition the output of the power inverter MCU, which are adjustable pulse width and frequency.
was smooth, and when this output voltage were fed to the Whereas, the output voltage and current of the single phase
single phase induction motor the motor stared run and the system fed an induction motor are shown in Fig. 7 and 8
response of the drive system was as expected. respectively.
C. Simulation & Experimental Result
1) Simulation Result: The Matlab Simulation Results for the
single phase variable frequency at steady state is shown in Fig.
4, while the experiment result is shown in Fig. 5.

International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 7(4) 2013 488 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/6698
 World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
International Journal of Electrical and Information Engineering
Vol:7, No:4, 2013

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. The experiment results 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
Fig. 6 Firing signal for the single phase inverter causes such as the control algorithm used in the
microcontroller and harmonic content at the inverter output.
International Science Index, Electrical and Information Engineering Vol:7, No:4, 2013 waset.org/Publication/6698

However, good results confirming the initial intention for

design.

REFERENCES
[1] K. Low, “A DSP-Based Variable AC Power Source”, Instrumentation
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[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
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[3] L. Rimifriu, M. Lucanu, C, Aghion, O. Ursaru, “Control With
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[5] A. S. Ba-thunya, R.Khopkar, K. Wei and H. A. Toliyat, “Single Phase
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International 2001, pp. 911 – 916.
[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
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UW-¬Madison, 2000, pp. 1-7.
[8] S. M. Bashi, I. Aris and S.H. Hamad “Development of Single Phase
Induction Motor Adjustable Speed Control Using M68HC11E-9
Microcontroller,” Journal of Applied Sciences 5 (2), pp. 249-252.

Fig. 8 Load Current during experiment

From comparing the output voltage and current waveforms

of the simulation results and experimental results we can
observed good agreement has been found between the
simulation and experimental results with respect to voltage
and current waveform shape.

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