2017 14th International Multi-Conference on Systems, Signals & Devices (SSD)

Design and realization of a single-phase inverter with

numerical control based on an Atmega32
*Mostafa El Ouariachi is with LETAS, Faculty of Science Khalil Kassmi, is with LETAS, Faculty of Science
Dept of Physics, University Mohamed First, Dept of Physics, University Mohamed First,
Oujda, Morocco. Oujda, Morocco.
*E-mail: mostafa14600@gmail.com Kamal Kassmi is with LETAS, Faculty of Science
Tarik Mrabti is with LETAS, Faculty of Science Dept of Physics, University Mohamed First,
Dept of Physics, University Mohamed First, Oujda, Morocco.
Oujda, Morocco

Abstract—This article aims to develop the control circuit of a load by means of a DC/AC converter (Inverter) which is
single-phase inverter following our previous studies on the MPPT necessary to operate the electrical and electronic devices
control and photovoltaic systems, this inverter produces a pure smoothly. Most inverters commercially are in fact square wave
sine wave with an output voltage that has the same amplitude inverters or quasi sinusoidal inverters.
and frequency as Network voltage. A microcontroller, based on
advanced technology to generate a sinusoid with fewer
The electronic devices managed by these inverters will be
harmonics, less cost and a simpler design. The technique used is damaged due to the content of the harmonics [4,5]. The
the sinusoidal pulse width modulation generated by the available sinusoidal wave inverters are too expensive and the
ATmega32 microcontroller. The designed inverter is tested on output is not sinusoidal, but the sine wave generation is
various AC loads and is primarily focused on applications such extremely important in power electronics. To obtain a pure
as an AC lamp. Proposed model of the inverter can improve the sinusoidal wave, the MLI switching technique is applied. This
waveform of the inverter and control the dead time. The finished method involves some type of switching used in DC-AC
design is simulated in Proteus to ensure output results that is inverter bridges [6,7]. MLI is a powerful technique. It is mainly
virtually verified. used in power electronics applications such as motor driver,
Keywords: ATmega32 Microcontroller, Analog to Digital and renewable energy system [8]. The switching techniques
Converter (DC-AC), Inverter, MPPT Control. MLI are characterized by pulses of constant amplitude
A different cycle of use for each period. The most common
method for generating this signal is to compare a sinusoidal
I. INTRODUCTION with a triangular waveform [9,10,12].
Due to the loss of emergency fuels worldwide, the The aim of this work is to replace the conventional method
increasing demand for electric power worldwide and the poor by using the ATMEGA32 microcontroller (control interface).
environmental impact of fuels, the need for new or unused The microcontroller is simpler and more flexible to change
sources of energy is becoming of interest to many governments the real-time control algorithms without further modification in
And companies. This energy is called photovoltaic energy [1]. a hardware with its reduced cost and reduces the complexity of
Currently, photovoltaic electrical energy is produced by panels the control circuit for the signal phase inverter bridge [11]. The
and PV systems [2]. Today, the world needs an increase in application of this inverter must be either for a stand-alone
electricity. The main reasons for the demand for increased connection or for a connection to the network from a direct
energy are population, economic growth and rapid depletion of supply of photovoltaic cells. The microcontroller constructed
fossils based on energy reserve and rapid growth in energy the dead time control circuit
demand. Then he has to look for another source of power
generation. One of these sources is a renewable energy that II. PROBLEM STATEMENT
may not harm the environment [3]. The need for the power 1- The inverter is one of the devices for power conversion
inverter is required to operate the electrical and electronic that is widely used in the world to convert the DC input voltage
devices smoothly. Most inverters commercially are in fact into alternating current output voltage. The output voltage
square wave inverters or quasi sinusoidal inverters waveform of the ideal inverters should be sinusoidal. However,
In this context, we have studied, in previous studies [1,2], the waveform of the practical inverter is non-sinusoidal and
the design, construction and optimization of a PV system contains harmonics [12,13]. The electronic devices, managed
equipped with a Boost DC/DC converter, an analog MPPT by this inverter, will be damaged by the content of the
control And a malfunction and reconvergence detection circuit harmonic. The content of the harmonics in the output of the
(CDCS) [1,2] to the PV power point (PPM) of the PV panel inverter depends on the number of pulses per cycle.
without restarting the PV system. We have concluded a very [4,14,15,16,17,19] Many researchers have studied that the
satisfactory operation and the possibility of using the system wave of the output signal is distorted.
realized in PV installations. In this paper, we present the results 2- By switching the loss problem, the number of pulses per
obtained in the case of the adaptation of the PV panels to the cycle is also affected. The use of high switching technology

978-1-5386-3175-1/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

239
will contribute to high power losses. The following factor must
be considered in order to meet the following requirements:
¾ Cost of equipment
¾ The size of the filter
¾ The loss of power in the switching of the element
3- The most important problem to consider is the time-out
control. The dead time period should be appropriate to avoid
the problem of damaging the switch and the harmonic problem.
If the dead time is short, it will cause damage to the switches
and if it is long it will cause an increase in the total harmonic
distortion, as discussed in [8, 9].
III. THE STRUCTURE OF THE SYSTEM AND THE Fig. 2. The H-bridge single-phase inverter.
CHARACTERIZATION OF THE PROPOSED DESIGN.
Figure 1 shows the basic block diagram of the proposed A. The ATmega32 microcontroller
system. The range of the inverter circuit is to obtain a desired
The ATmega32 microcontroller is used to generate the
output voltage of 220 VAC and a frequency of 50 Hz. The
sinusoidal PWM signals required to control and switch the H-
contents of the system designed are as follows:
bridge MOSFET. The basic circuit of this system is an
a) Module supplying the inverter (Photovoltaic Panel
ATmega32 microcontroller which is developed to generate a
or Battery) [20].
sinusoidal PWM with the dead time controller.
b) The circuit of the ATMEGA32 microcontroller
Figure 3 shows the timing diagram of the dead time, dead
and the programming software.
time control is useful for reducing cost and components. The
c) Testing the inverter circuit. extremely important issue to consider is the time-out control.
d) Blocks to dirver.
e) The filter circuit.
f) The load or the User.
The complete H bridge inverter circuit is used to convert a
DC voltage into a sinusoidal AC voltage at a desired voltage
and output frequency.

Fig. 3. Diagram of time of observation of dead time.

B. Diagram for signaling the inverter

In Output two MLI signals which will cause the four
MOSFET transistors to switch but only two at a time, is to send
a signal MLI1 to S1 and S3 and signal MLI2 to S2 and S4, A
Fig. 1. Functional diagram of the proposed system. very regular way to avoid a short circuit.
Digital to analog conversion, It is a simple and efficient
The generation of a sinusoidal wave centered on a zero way to generate an analog voltage with a microcontroller. Few
voltage requires both a positive voltage and a negative voltage of them are indeed equipped with an analog digital converter.
on the load. This can be obtained from a single source through The principle is to generate a logic signal (value 0 or 1),
the use of the H-bridge inverter circuit as shown in the Figure. with a fixed frequency but whose cyclic ratio is digitally
2. In the standard H-bridge circuit, the switches S1, S3, S2 and controlled. The average of the output signal is equal to the
S4 are arranged in this configuration. [20]. cyclic ratio: it is therefore sufficient to put a filter to obtain the
The two trigger signals GS1 and GS3 are simultaneously desired analog value.
switched to half the cycle (one period T) while the two trigger In this program mainly, one uses the Timer 1 and the Timer
signals GS2 and GS4 are simultaneously switched to the other 0 and two Table:
half [12,14, 21]. The difference is only to signals GS1 and GS3 ¾ Timer 1A: an internal interruption or a counter
leading GS2 and GS4 by half cycle (half-period T/2) or 180 will count up to 250, both table: contains the duty
degrees of the switching signal. The output of the circuit has a cycle values for each pulse,
periodic waveform which is not sinusoidal [12].

240
 ¾ Timer 1B: an internal interruption or a counter resistance of 77 mΩ, which reduces power dissipation and
will count up to the values stored in table 1 increases efficiency.
successively,
¾ Timer 0: an internal interrupt or a counter will
count to the values stored in table 2 successively.
To have a frequency of 50Hz, we need a delay of 20ms in
the period, but since we have two parts two half period, the
delay we used is 10ms.

- The two transistors S1 and S3 will have the 15 volts

by the first driver which is linked with the PORTD0
which generates the 5 volts.
- The transistors S2 and S4 will be blocked because the
PORTD1 will have 0 volts.
Fig. 5. Schematic of complete H-bridge circuits
- These actions are repeated during the 10 ms period.

- The two transistors S2 and S4 will have the 15 volts

by the first driver which is linked with the PORTD0
which generates the 5 volt.
- The transistors S1 and S3 will be blocked because the
PORTD1 will have 0 volts.
- These actions are repeated during the 10 ms period.

C. Driver IR2111
To control the MOSFET grid depends on two basic
categories, a low and a high, configured in the complete H-
circuit. The upper side of the MOSFETs (S1, S2) can float
between ground (negative terminal) and high voltage (positive
Fig. 6. Schematic of the driver circuits
terminal), the low side of the MOSFET (S3, S4) is connected
between the power source and ground [ 9], the IR2111, has an
input and output stage and a power supply. This driver is an B. Simulation Results of the Complete System
optically isolated driver. The gate control circuit is shown in Figure. 7 shows the results of the simulation of the
the Figure. 4. operation of the four control signals of the H bridge inverter.
The ATMEGA32 microcontroller is used to generate the PWM
signals required to control and switch the H-bridge MOSFET.

Fig. 4. The gate conductor IR2111

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. Design and implementation of the complete system

The circuit diagram of the full H bridge and drivers are
shown in Figure 5 and 6. In this section, we designed of the
hardware configuration. The complete H-bridge converter
shown consists of four MOSFET derived by IRF540 switches
Fig. 7. Shows the waveform of the ATMEGA32 microcontroller signal
of 100V, 28A and fast switching. This switch has an ultra-low generated by simulation

241
C. Experimental Procedures
Four types of PV panels, and the bench of completely
measurements that were the subject of our study are shown in
Figures 8 and 9. [1-2, 19]
The DC-DC Boost converter, the analog MLI control are
sized, designed and realized during this work are shown in
Figure 10. [22]

Fig. 12. Implementation and testing of the inverter on lab plate

Fig. 8. Photovoltaic panels installed in the laboratory.
The AVR microcontrollers such as the ATMEGA32 belong
to Atmel. This company provides an ATMEL Studio
programming environment, which allows the programming of
these microcontrollers in C language.
The ATMEGA32 performs operations approaching 1 MIPS
per MHZ allowing realizing systems with low power
consumption and simple on the electronic level. The
ATMEGA32 is a low-power circuit containing a
microprocessor, 32K flash memory, 4I / O ports and an internal
oscillator.
Fig. 9. Measuring bench set up to characterize inverter systems.
To program our ATMEGA32 microcontroller, we used a
programmer (figure 13) and the software ATMEL Studio
A B

Fig. 10. Photos taken of the boards: A: Boost DC-DC converter, B: Analogue
MLI control
D. Experimental Results Operation of single-phase inverter
Figurs. 11 and 12 show that the proposed hardware
configuration of the operation inverter circuit for obtaining a
sinusoidal AC output voltage with a nominal voltage amplitude
Fig. 13. ATMEGA32 Microcontroller Programmer
of 220 V AC and a frequency of 50 Hz. These values agree
with the voltage and The grid frequency, the ATMEGA32
The operation of the circuit is as follows: The driver
microcontroller operates at a clock speed of 20 MHz and the IR2111of the MOSFET is used to apply the switching pulses
sinusoidal PWM control signal is set to 16 KHz. The
coming from the ATMEGA32 microcontroller to the MOSFET
ATMEGA32 operates with a 5V voltage generated by a linear
IR540 switches. The PWM sinusoidal signals are produced by
voltage regulator LM7805.
the ATMEGA32 microcontroller and used to control the
IRF540 MOSFETs. To generate a sinusoidal pulse width
modulation signal, each half-cycle of sine wave is divided into
2 changes in the PWM signal of a half cycle which takes 10
ms.
Figure 14 shows the simulation and experimental results of
the operation of the four H-bridge inverter control signals, a
four-channel Textonix TDS 3014C digital phosphor 100 MHz-
1.25GS/s digital oscilloscope is used to measure the
experimental results. The ATMEGA32 microcontroller is used
Fig. 11. DC-AC Inverter Monitoring Equipment Bench

242
to generate the PWM signals required to control and switch the
H-bridge MOSFET. A B
The two-level PWM operation of the H-bridge inverter will
have the high sides of the switching circuit at the sinusoidal
PWM control frequency at a half cycle which takes 10 ms the
different is only PWM1 is the main signal PWM3 per half-
Cycle and low sides switching to the 50 Hz sine wave low
frequency at a half cycle which takes 10ms also the PWM2
Fig. 17. Output of an inverter without filter (A: simulation result, B
control signal driving PWM4 per half cycle or 180 degrees of Experimental result).
the phase shifted control signals.
The two signals are then connected to essential
conditioning elements in order to be able to put the MOSFET A B
on the complete bridge. PWM signals going to the MOSFET
(IRF 540N) will switch two diagonals of the complete H-
bridge simultaneously to one of the two halves and the other
two diagonal MOSFETs (IRF 540N) to the other halves.
A B
Fig. 18. Experimental signals during inverter operation (A: load RL, B:
inverter output with RLC filtering)

The output of the bridge inverter H is shown in Figure. 15

to the step-up transformer and the output of the transformer is
connected to the load through an LC filter to obtain the desired
output AC sinusoidal waveform.
Fig. 14. Represents the signal waveform of the ATMEGA32 microcontroller Figure. 16 shows the results of the simulation of the sine
generated by simulation in (A) and by experiment in (B) PWM1, waveform of the Proteus output software of the complete H-
PWM2, PWM3, PWM4,
bridge single-phase inverter and the experimental results of the
inverter output waveforms to ensure that The output waveform
gives a pure sine wave is practically verified. The inverter is
tested on different AC loads. As shown in Figure. 17, 18, 19.
The following conditions:
¾ 75W (lamp) loads connected in parallel.
¾ 18V DC input voltage
¾ Input current of 1.52 A
¾ AC output voltage 184.9V and frequency 50Hz

Fig. 15. The card of the single-phase inverter produced in this work

Figures 16, 17 and 18 show the simulation and

experimental results of the output waveform of the full-bridge
single-phase inverter (Figure 15). The output voltage of the H
bridge inverter has a periodic waveform which is not a sine
wave but to obtain a desired output sine wave signal CA by
connecting the LC filter. The frequency of the output wave
from the simulation and the experimental results is 50 Hz. This
frequency is exactly equal to the frequency of the electrical
network.

A B

Fig. 19. Hardware configuration of a pure sinusoidal inverter with a lamp

Fig. 16. The simulation signals result in proteus (a: load RL, b: inverter
load of 75w
output with RLC filtering)

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