Measurement 45 (2012) 5967

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Measurement
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/measurement

A microcontroller-based variable voltage variable frequency sinusoidal

power source with a novel PWM generation strategy
Pijus Kanti Sadhu, Gautam Sarkar , Anjan Rakshit
Department of Electrical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal 700 032, India

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 22 April 2011
Received in revised form 12 August 2011
Accepted 26 September 2011
Available online 12 October 2011
Keywords:
Variable voltage variable frequency power
source
Sinusoidal pulse width modulation
Microcontroller
MOSFET H-bridge inverter
LCD display

a b s t r a c t
The present paper describes the development of a low cost, microcontroller-based variable
voltage variable frequency sinusoidal power source, which is the demand of the day for
various applications. The power source is developed using MOSFET H-bridge inverter
and with a stand alone LCD display system. The design methodology proposes to utilize
a novel concept of generating sinusoidal pulse width modulation signals for the driver circuit of the inverter. The system proposes to incorporate a ROM-based LUT within the
power source itself for the sinusoidal signal generation with enhanced stability. This low
cost, yet accurate power source has been successfully developed for wide range of voltage
commands (3080 V rms) and frequency commands (4070 Hz), and their real-life performances in voltage wave generation were also found to be quite satisfactory.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The efcient use of available power for various types of
demand has remained an important issue in electrical
engineering domain and hence has attracted attention
from many research communities all over the world. The
focus has very often been to develop dedicated types of
power sources according to specic, tailor-made demands.
Very often, such requirements are specied in form of generation of ac sources having variable magnitude, variable
frequency and different types of waveform shapes [15].
Depending on requirement, there may be design and
development of single phase [1,3] or three phase power
sources [2,4,5]. Studies and analyses of suitable power converters in this regard have been going on for quite some
time [68]. Such power sources will be specically useful
in characterization of performance of ac sources, e.g., in
three phase induction motor drive traction and also in torque and speed control, single phase induction motor for
residential applications. The quality of electrical power

Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 9433088773; fax: +91 3324146184.

E-mail address: sgautam63@yahoo.com (G. Sarkar).
0263-2241/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.measurement.2011.09.024

developed is gradually becoming a matter of major concern as the new generation equipments installed for
increasing productivity very often turn out to be the major
sources of creating additional power quality problems.
Hence, in an overall consideration, design of high quality,
variable voltage variable frequency (VVVF) power source
with a wide range of peak-to-peak pure sine waveforms,
with a wide range of frequency and with minimum distortion in the generated waveform, still remains a major
challenge.
In [1], a DSP-based variable ac source was developed
using sliding mode control and Kalman lter methodology.
This system achieved harmonic distortion of less than 2%
in steady state response, while driving a linear, resistive
load. In [3], a microcontroller-based variable frequency
power inverter design was proposed for both single-phase
and three-phase systems. The microcontroller was used to
provide the pulse width modulation (PWM) signal for gate
voltage control drive of the IGBT inverter bridge. However,
this system was only implemented in simulation. In [4], a
three phase stable VVVF power source was developed
using a class D topology of power ampliers and hysteresis
control strategy. In [5], a microcontroller-based three
phase, three level voltage source inverter was developed

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P.K. Sadhu et al. / Measurement 45 (2012) 5967

230V
50Hz

Voltage
Control

Opto-isolated
Variable DC Source

Microcontrollerbased Voltage
Controller with
Feed-forward
Compensation

MOSFET H-bridge

Isolation
Transformer

Variable Voltage
Variable Frequency
AC Output

Filter

High-side/Lowside Driver

Stepdown
Transformer and
Rectifier

Microcontrollerbased PWM Drive

Microcontrollerbased User Interface

LCD Display based

Output Voltage and
Frequency Monitor

Frequency
Control

Fig. 1. The overall block diagram of the VVVF power source developed.

using two-level inverter topology. In recent times, effective

instantaneous frequency estimation schemes for a single
sinusoid [13,14] and for multiple sinusoids have also been
proposed. In [14], a scheme has been proposed for a portable DSP-based instrumentation system where the frequency estimation is carried out on the basis of four
equal spaced samples. However, developments of such frequency estimators are known to be sensitive to deviation
in sampling rate and quantization noise. In [15], an effective scheme for estimation of quantized multiple sinusoids
was proposed using an iterative approach for optimization
of a nonlinear cost function. However, this efcient scheme
was developed in simulation only, and no real-life implementation was presented.
The present work describes the development of a
microcontroller-based single phase VVVF sinusoidal power
source employing MOSFET H-bridge inverter. The proposed scheme uses a novel concept of generating suitable
PWM signals, called sinusoidal pulse width modulation
(SPWM) technique, where constant amplitude pulses are
generated with different duty cycles for each period. The
widths of these pulses are suitably modulated to obtain inverter output. The scheme is so designed that a read only
memory (ROM)-based look-up table (LUT) is embedded
within the power source itself for the sinusoidal signal
generation within the power source itself. This method offers several advantages such as improved stability and
high-performance control over the generated sinusoidal
signal. The scheme uses two microcontrollers where one
microcontroller is used to generate the proposed variable
frequency sine wave PWM drive and the other microcontroller is used for controlling the stand alone LCD display
of the developed real power source. The developed scheme
has been successfully employed for an ac voltage range of
0100 V rms and a frequency range of 4070 Hz. The utility of the developed system is aptly demonstrated by calculating the desired performance in terms of total
harmonic distortion (THD) over a wide range of desired
commands.
The rest of the manuscript is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes the overall proposed VVVF power source.
Section 3 details the power circuit design, Section 4 details
the control circuit and display circuit design, Section 5

details the driver circuit design, Section 6 details the power

supply circuit design and Section 7 details the protection
circuit design. The performance evaluation is presented in
Section 8. Conclusions are presented in Section 9.

Fig. 2. An actual photograph of the power source: (a) uncovered view and
(b) encased view.

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P.K. Sadhu et al. / Measurement 45 (2012) 5967

+5V
Voltage
control

Zero crossing
detector

To opto-isolated
variable DC source

PIC12F675

Signal for feed-forward

compensation
+9V unregulated
P

+5V

7805

230V
50Hz

9V

Fig. 3a. The voltage controller scheme developed.

Triac

From Voltage
Controller

Full-wave Rectifier
P

MOC3023
Random-phase
Opto-isolator

230V
50Hz
N

Choke

+
-

Variable DC
output

Fig. 3b. The scheme of the opto-isolated variable DC source developed.

In5408
4A/800V

Fig. 4. The schematic diagram of the power circuit.

+5V
+5V
Offset
adjustment

CCP1

AN0

CCP2

PWM outputs to Highside/Low-side driver

18F2520
Port B

8-bit Frequency data

from Display Interface

10 MHz
Fig. 5a. Microcontroller-based PWM drive designed.

62

P.K. Sadhu et al. / Measurement 45 (2012) 5967

+5V

From Stepdown
Transformer and
Rectifier

+5V
Frequency
Control

AN0

Output Voltage
Display Scale-factor
Adjustment

AN1

18F2520
8-bit Frequency data
to PWM drive

Port B

To LCD Display

Port C

Fig. 5b. Microcontroller-based user interface designed.

Fig. 3a shows the detailed voltage controller system

developed, and Fig. 3b shows the opto-isolated variable
DC source developed which uses its input from the voltage
controller and provides its output as an input to the MOSFET
H-bridge. The scheme employs phase control methodology
for the Triac ring scheme. The main contribution of this circuit module is to provide a design controlled ring delay
from zero crossing (delayt) calculated as:

2. PIC microcontroller-based variable voltage variable

frequency (VVVF) power source
Fig. 1 shows the overall block diagram of the power
source developed, and Fig. 2 shows an actual photograph
of the equipment. The overall instrument comprises design
of ve salient blocks: (i) power circuit, (ii) control circuit and
display circuit, (iii) driver circuit, (iv) power supply circuit
and (v) protection circuit. In Fig. 1, the xed voltage, xed
frequency (FVFF) ac voltage from the mains is applied to
a voltage regulator. The regulator is connected with a feed
forward compensator to maintain the voltage at a desired
level, and then, this voltage is rectied, using a full wave
bridge rectier, to produce a dc voltage. A MOSFET
H-bridge inverter, comprising four MOSFETS, is employed
to convert this dc voltage into ac again. This conversion
of ac to dc and then dc to ac again is required because it
is easier to exercise control over dc than ac. The desired
variable frequency is generated by developing a microcontroller-based system [9] that outputs variable frequency
sine wave PWM drive for the driver circuit of the inverter.
Another microcontroller-based system is developed to display the output voltage and frequency generated by the
power source. The scheme also employs a power supply
circuit which is necessary for providing the initial voltage
to the chips and the microcontrollers.

delayt 10 mS  K 0 K 1  voltage control

 K 2  feed forward signal

Hence, the ring delay varies as a linear weighted combination of the voltage control signal and the feed forward
signal. Here, K0 determines the minimum output voltage,
i.e., the offset in the ring delay in absence of any voltage
control and feed forward signal. Similarly, K1 inuences
the required span of output voltage variation, and K2 inuences the amount of compensation required.
3. The power circuit design
A detail schematic description of the power circuit is
given in Fig. 4. Here, the FVFF ac power at 230 V, 50 Hz is
applied to the voltage regulator with feed forward compensator such that the output voltage can be controlled
+5V

4.7K /0.25W

From Output of Control Circuit

+5V
4.7K
11
12
13
14
15
16

11
12
13
14
6
4

162 LCD
Display
JHD162A

15
1

+5V

16

Fig. 6. The display circuit designed.

Display contrast
adjustment
potentiometer
(Preset)

63

P.K. Sadhu et al. / Measurement 45 (2012) 5967

at any desired level within the range 0150 V, in steps of

1 V, by a simple resistance potentiometer. The output from
the regulator is applied to the full wave bridge rectier
through an inductor (i.e. a choke coil) to limit the current
during switching. The rectier performs the dc conversion,
and at the output, a high value capacitor is connected to
obtain a smooth, ripple free, dc output. A bleeder resistance is connected in parallel to provide a discharge path
for the capacitor during off conditions.
The output from the rectier is applied across a MOSFET
H-bridge inverter, where four n-channel enhancement
type MOSFETs are connected in H shape. The switching
of these MOSFETs is controlled by the driver circuit. The
driver circuit sends pulse to the gate and source of each

MOSFET. When the driver circuit sends pulse to a particular MOSFET, it immediately turns ON, and when the pulse
is withdrawn, the MOSFET is turned OFF. This sequence of
switching is so designed that, at a particular switching instant, a pair of MOSFETs (say MOSFET1 and MOSFET4) is in
ON condition and the other pair (MOSFET2 and MOSFET3)
is in OFF condition. In the next switching instant, just the
reverse happens, i.e., MOSFET2 and MOSFET3 are turned
ON and MOSFET1 and MOSFET4 are turned OFF. Here, each
MOSFET is protected by an R-C snubber circuit. The VVVF
output from the power source is obtained by tapping the
AC output from the MOSFET H-bridge inverter through
an isolation transformer, which is equipped with a lter
bank in its secondary side.

+12V
0.1F/30V
Disc

100F/35V

+5V

UF4007

G1
Zener

Disc

18V/1W

10F/
35V

0.5 F/30V

UF4007

S1

0.5F/30V
Disc

10F/
35V

UF4007
G2

10 /0.25W
S2

+12V
0.1F/30V
Disc

+5V
100F/35V

UF4007
10 /0.25W
G3
18V/1W
Zener

10F/
35V

0.5F/30V
Disc

UF4007

IR2110
10F/
35V

0.25

0.25

S3

0.5F/30V
Disc

From Output of Control Circuit & Display Circuit

IR2110

UF4007

0.25W
Shut Down

2N2222

G4
S4

0.25W

2N2222

From
Protection Circuit

+5V
0.25W

Fig. 7. The driver circuit designed.

64

P.K. Sadhu et al. / Measurement 45 (2012) 5967

half cycle. The novelty of this module designed lies in

providing an offset to the generation of a sinusoidal voltage
step value as a function of the PWM duty cycle look-up
table (LUT). This offset is instrumental in minimizing the
total harmonic distortion (THD) of the sinusoidal output
due to a nite ON/OFF time of MOSFET switching devices
for a given PWM carrier frequency. A higher offset is required for higher PWM carrier frequency for a given THD
and vice versa. Hence, in this work, it is proposed to calculate the working PWM duty cycle (DPWM_W), for a given
step, as:

4. The control circuit and display circuit design

This part of the circuit basically comprises a control
circuit and a display circuit.

4.1. Control circuit

The design of the control circuit is achieved by using
two PIC18F2520 [10] microcontrollers: one, for managing
the analog frequency input and the display and the other,
for production of the PWM pulse. Figs. 5a and 5b show
the two PIC 18F2520 microcontroller-based circuits individually, which are employed for microcontroller-based
PWM drive and microcontroller-based user interface design and development, respectively. In the microcontroller-based PWM drive module designed, CCP1 and CCP2
are utilized to provide PWM outputs to high-side/low-side
driver. Specically, CCP1 generates the PWM ring signal
with 64 steps for the positive half cycle, and CCP2 generates the PWM ring signal with 64 steps for the negative

DPWM

Offset DPWM  DPWM

where DPWM P is the peak duty cycle corresponding to the

peak of the sinusoidal voltage. This is selected as less than
100% to cope with the problem of nite OFF-time of MOSFET switching devices.
In the overall control circuit, the desired analog frequency is input by a resistance potentiometer, and this

Fig. 9. The protection circuit designed.

Wattmeter
P.C.
AC Supply
230V,50Hz

 2  Offset=DPWM P
2

Fig. 8. Schematic diagram of the power supply circuit designed.

Variable Voltage
Variable
Frequency
Power Source

C.C.

N1 N2

Vrms

A
Lloyd-Fisher
Magnetic
Square

Fig. 10. Test setup for measurement of iron losses.

V av

P.K. Sadhu et al. / Measurement 45 (2012) 5967

information is converted to its digital form by using an

ADC, as shown in Fig. 5b. This digital frequency control
information is transmitted to the other microcontroller,
shown in Fig. 5a, that produces the desired PWM pulse
according to this digital frequency control, which is then
transmitted to the logic circuit. The microcontroller in
Fig. 5b, which is interfaced with the LCD display, receives
a feedback from the ac output of the power circuit, in a reduced dc form (obtained using a step down transformer
and a half wave rectier), for display in the display circuit.
4.2. Display circuit
The display circuit comprises JHD162A, a 16 character  2 row display chip [12]. Fig. 6 shows this circuit used
here for display of output ac voltage and frequency.

65

5. The driver circuit design

The driver circuit designed is shown in detail in Fig. 7. It
is designed to receive input signal from the logic circuit
and to produce suitable drives for the MOSFETs connected
in the H-bridge inverter. This driver circuit is designed
utilizing the popular chip IR 2110 [11] which has the following features:
(i) gate drive supply ranges from 10 V to 20 V,
(ii) under voltage lockout for both channels,
(iii) matched propagation delay for both channels to
simplify use in high frequency applications,
(iv) the outputs produced are in phase with the inputs,
(v) can drive independently high- and low-side referenced output channels,

Fig. 11. DC output vs. line voltage variation for different voltage settings with feed forward compensation. (a) Captured waveform at 150 V (peak to peak)
and 40 Hz, (b) captured waveform at 150 V (peak to peak) and 50 Hz, (c) captured waveform at 150 V (peak to peak) and 60 Hz, (d) captured waveform at
150 V (peak to peak) and 70 Hz, (e) captured waveform at 200 V (peak to peak) and 40 Hz, (f) captured waveform at 200 V (peak to peak) and 50 Hz, (g)
captured waveform at 200 V (peak to peak) and 60 Hz, (h) captured waveform at 200 V (peak to peak) and 70 Hz.

66

P.K. Sadhu et al. / Measurement 45 (2012) 5967

Fig. 11 (continued)

(vi) the oating channel can be used to drive an N-channel power MOSFET in the high-side conguration
which operates up to 500 V.
In IR 2110, the output follows the input signal when the
shut down signal is low, but the output will be low if the
shut down signal is high.
6. Power supply circuit design
The scheme also utilizes a suitable power supply circuit
that is designed to provide the operating dc power to the
microcontrollers, driver chips, the display chip, op-amps,
etc. Here, a step down transformer receives the ac power
from the supply mains and reduces the voltage level. This
reduced voltage is rectied by a center tap full wave rectier to obtain dc which is then passed through two dc regulators, connected in cascade, to obtain both +12 V and
+5 V dc power supply. The circuit is developed using electrolytic capacitors to obtain smooth and ripple free dc
power supply. This dc power is made available through
3-pin relimate connector. Fig. 8 shows the schematic of
this power supply circuit designed.
7. Protection circuit design
A protection circuit is designed to protect the main circuit from several types of fault conditions, namely short
circuit fault, over load fault and over current fault. During
fault condition, heavy current will ow through the power

circuit. Due to this heavy current ow, the protection circuit will generate a signal that will be transmitted to the
shut down fault point of the driver circuit. Then, the driver
circuit will immediately deactivate the drives of the
MOSFETs of the power circuit. Fig. 9 shows this protection
circuit designed.

8. Experimental results
The performance of the designed variable voltage
variable frequency (VVVF) sinusoidal power source is
evaluated by utilizing it for a nonlinear load where the
source is utilized for Lloyd-Fisher square-based iron-loss
measurement of magnetic specimens and separation of
iron losses into hysteresis and eddy current losses, utilizing
wattmeter method. The experimental set up is shown in
Fig. 10. The arrangement is utilized for a voltage range of
(3080 V rms) and for a frequency range of 4070 Hz.
The gure of merit employed to quantitatively calculate
the performance of the system developed is the wellknown performance index of total harmonic distortion
(THD). The analysis is carried out where several real-life
waveforms are generated under different specied, desired
voltage and frequency commands. The qualities of those
generated waveforms are evaluated by calculating the
THD. The manufacturers and models of the instruments
employed in the measurement circuit to carry out these
experimentations include digital oscilloscope from Agilent
Technologies. Fig. 11 shows some sample, generated waveforms of the VVVF sinusoidal power source, captured using

P.K. Sadhu et al. / Measurement 45 (2012) 5967

Table 1
Sample THD evaluations for the power source designed.
Sl. no.

RMS voltage output (V)

Frequency (Hz)

THD (%)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

74.6
69.4
77.1
77.7
90.2
90.3
77.9
88.1
83.2
82.2
75.6
64.9
59.0
76.3
86.1

50.57
44.40
53.62
59.42
64.30
69.20
54.53
68.24
65.27
65.03
50.58
45.67
40.73
50.50
60.39

8.8
2.8
4.0
3.5
3.7
3.2
2.9
3.4
6.2
5.6
9.0
5.1
3.7
3.5
6.3

a digital storage oscilloscope. Table 1 shows the quantitative performance evaluation in some sample cases. Table 1
and Fig. 11 in combination demonstrate that the proposed
scheme can faithfully construct voltage waveforms over
the desired range of voltage and frequency commands.
Fig. 10 shows the utility of employing feed forward
compensation in conjunction with the voltage controller.
Here, the DC output voltage is plotted vs. line voltage variation for different voltage settings. This scheme is very
useful in those situations where the line voltage does not
remain steady at its nominal value (in our case, 230 V)
and undergoes variation, usually in the lower side. Had
there been no compensation provided, this curve would
have been a straight line passing through origin, with a
slope of 45 with the horizontal axis. With incorporation
of feed forward compensation, the scheme showed good
accuracy in providing almost a straight line variation parallel to the horizontal axis for different desired output DC
voltage settings (e.g. 160/180/200/220V DC).
9. Conclusion
A precision type, low cost, microcontroller-based variable voltage variable frequency sinusoidal power source
has been designed in this work. The developed scheme
has been successfully employed for an ac voltage range
of 3080 V rms and a frequency range of 4070 Hz. The
VVVF source has been developed employing MOSFET
H-bridge inverter, and it introduces a novel concept of
generating suitable PWM signals, called sinusoidal pulse
width modulation (SPWM) technique, where constant
amplitude pulses are generated with different duty cycles
for each period. Incorporation of a ROM-based LUT within
the power source itself provides additional robustness and
desired performance achieving capability for the proposed
scheme. The performance of the designed source has been
successfully demonstrated by its capability to faithfully
reproduce the commanded sine wave of desired amplitude

67

and frequency over their respective wide ranges. This provides a simple, accurate, easy in operation power source
which is a low cost solution compared to the standard,
off-the-self products readily available in the market. Some
of the commercially available products include those available from Agilent [16] (6811B AC Power Source/Power
Analyzer), California Instruments [17] (251 TL), etc. However, each such instrument is a high end equipment that
is highly expensive and may not be affordable for people
in the research communities or in small industries, purely
from the economic point of view. One of the main objectives of the present work is to offer them a readymade
solution, at a much cheaper price. The scheme has been
presently developed for generation of single phase ac voltages. The future scope of work will concentrate on development of similar power sources for generation of three
phase voltages.

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