1

Design and Implementation of a Pure Sine Wave Single Phase Inverter for
Photovoltaic Applications
1

Mohamed A.Ghalib1, Yasser S.Abdalla 2, R. M.Mostafa3

Automatic Control Department, Faculty of Industrial Education, Beni-suef University, Egypt.
master_bsu@yahoo.com
2
Electrical Department, Faculty of Industrial Education, Suez University, Egypt.
3

Electronics and Automatic Control Department, Beni-Suef University, Egypt

Abstract
This paper aims at developing the control circuit for
a single phase inverter which produces a pure sine wave
with an output voltage that has the same magnitude and
frequency as a grid voltage. A microcontroller, based on
an advanced technology to generate a sine wave with
fewer harmonics, less cost and a simpler design. The
technique used is the sinusoidal pulse width modulation
signal (SPWM) which is generated by microcontroller.
The designed inverter is tested on various AC loads and is
essentially focused upon low power electronic
applications such as a lamp, a fan and chargers etc. The
proposed model of the inverter can improve the output
wave forms of the inverter and the dead time control
reduced to 63s. The finished design is simulated in
Proteus and PSIM software to ensure output results which
is verified practically.
Keywords: A microcontroller; Sinusoidal Pulse Width
Modulation (SPWM); Dead time; Analog to digital
converter (ADC), Inverter.

1. Introduction
Nowadays, the world needs the electricity to be
increased. The main reasons for the energy
increase demand are the population, the
economy growth and the rapid depletion of
fossils based on energy reserve and rapid
growth of energy demand. Then, it must
research for an alternative source of power
generation. One of these sources is a renewable
energy which possibly has no harm on the
environment [1]. The need of the power rating
inverter is required to operate electrical and
electronic appliances smoothly. Most of the
available commercially uninterruptible power
supplies (UPSs) are actually square wave
inverters or quasi sine wave inverters.
Electronic devices, managed by these inverters
will be damaged due to the contents of the
harmonics [2, 3]. Available pure sine wave
inverters are too expensive and the output non
sinusoidal, but the sine wave generation is

extremely important in power electronics. For

getting a pure sine wave, the SPWM switching
technique is applied. This method involves a
certain pattern of switching used in the DC-toAC inverter bridges [4, 5]. The SPWM is a
powerful technique. It's mainly widely used in
power electronics applications such as the motor
driver, UPS, and the renewable energy system
[6].
SPWM
switching
techniques
are
characterized by constant amplitude pulses with
a different duty cycle for each period. The most
common method to generate this signal is to
compare a sinusoidal with a triangular
waveform [7, 8, 9].
The purpose of this work is to replace the
convention method with the use of peripheral
interface controller (PIC) microcontroller.
Microcontroller is capable of storing commands
to generate the necessary pulse width
modulation waveform due to the built in PWM
module. The microcontroller provides the
variable frequency pulse width modulation
signal that controls the applied voltage on the
gate drive by using the system of PIC16f877A.
The microcontroller is more simple and flexible
to change control algorithms in a real time
without further changes in a hardware with it's
low cost and reduces the complexity of the
control circuit for the signal phase inverter
bridge [10]. The application of this inverter is to
be either for stand-alone or for grid connection
from a direct supply of photovoltaic cells. The
microcontroller has built control circuit in dead
time.

2. Problem statement
1- The inverter is one of the power conversion
device that is widely used in the world to
convert DC input voltage to AC output voltage.
The output voltage wave form of ideal inverters
should be sinusoidal. However, the waveform of
practical inverter is non-sinusoidal and contains
harmonics [11, 12]. The electronic devices,
managed by this inverter will be damaged due
to the contents of the harmonic. Harmonics
contents in inverter output depend on the
number of pulses per cycle. [2, 13, 14, 15, 16,
17] Many researchers investigated that the
output signal wave is distorted.
2- In switching the losses problem, the number
of pulses per cycle is also affected. The use of
high switching technique will contribute to the
high power losses. The following factor is to be
considered in order to meet the following
requirements.
i. The Cost of the equipment
ii. The Size of the filter
iii. The Power loss in switching the element
3- The most important problem to be considered
is the dead time control. Dead time period must
be suitable to avoid the problem of damaging
the switch and harmonic problem. If the dead
time is short, it will cause damage to the
switches and if it is long, it will cause increase
in the total harmonic distortion, as studied in [6
,7].
3. The System and Characterization of the
Proposed Design.
Figure 1 shows the basic block diagram of
the proposed system. The range of the inverter
circuit is to obtain a desired output voltage of
220 V ac and a frequency of 50 Hz. The
contents of the designed system are:1- Power module of the inverter.
2- The microcontroller circuit and programming
software.
3- Testing the inverter circuit.
The full H-bridge inverter circuit is used to
convert a DC voltage to a sinusoidal AC voltage
at a desired output voltage and frequency.

Fig.1 Block diagram of the proposed system.

Fig.2 The Full H-bridge single phase inverter.

Generating a sin wave centered on zero

voltage requires both positive and negative
voltage across the load. This can be achieved
from a single source through the use of Hbridge inverter circuit as shown in Fig. 2. In
standard H-bridge circuit, switches S1, S3, S2
and S4 are arranged in this configuration [18].
Both gating signal GS1 and GS3 are switched
simultaneous at one half of cycle while both
gating signal GS2 and GS4 are simultaneous
switched at the other half [13, 19, 20]. The
difference is only at GS1 and GS3 signals leading
GS2 and GS4 by half cycle or 180 degree of the
switching signal. The output of the circuit has a
periodic waveform that is not sinusoidal [20].
The PIC microcontroller is used to generate the
required sinusoidal PWM signals to drive and
switch the H-bridge MOSFET transistor.
The basic circuit of this system is a PIC
microcontroller which is developed to generate
a sinusoidal PWM with the dead time controller.
The dead time control is useful to reduce the

cost and components. The extremely important

problem to be considered is the dead time
control. The timing diagram of the dead time is
shown in Fig. 3.

Fig.3 Observation timing diagram of dead time.

There is a potential overlapping signals

between ON period switches pair S1, S4 and S2,
S3 pair in H-bridge inverter. This overlap can
cause the short circuit of DC bus [6]. The dead
time can be controlled through programming by
using PIC microcontroller. The period of dead
time must be suitable to avoid the problem of
switch damage and harmonic.
3.1 Software Algorithm

3- Calculating the PWM module.

4- Calculating
the
output
voltage
amplitude.
5- If the output voltage is equal to Vreference
then returns step 2.
6- If the output voltage is greater than
Vreference then decreases the address of
the look up table and returns to step 3.
7- If the output voltage is less than Vreference
then increases the address in look up
table and return to step 3.
8- Going to step 1.
3.2 Gate Driver
The driving of the MOSFET gate is
dependent on two basic categories, a low-side
and a high-side configured, in the full H-bridge
circuit. The high-side of the MOSFETs (Q1,Q2)
can float between the ground and the high
voltage power, the low-side of the MOSFET
(Q3,Q4) is connected between the power source
and is constantly ground [7], the TLP250
driver, has an input and output stage and power
supply. This driver is an optically isolated
driver. The gate driver circuit is shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5 the gate driver TLP250

Fig.4 The flow chart for programming the signal phase

inverter SPWM signal.

Pseudo code contains the following steps:

1- Initialize the variables and all peripheral
microcontrollers.
2- Setting the address of the look up table.

The input forward voltage will typically be

between 1.6 V and 1.8 V, the propagation delay
time will typically between 0.15s and 0.5s
and the maximum operating frequency is to be
25 kHz in datasheet. When designing circuits
with TLP250 a 100nf bypass capacitor (ceramic
capacitor) is in output of the driver, this
capacitor called boost strip capacitor used to
protect the driver of dv/dt, a capacitor stabilizes
the operation of the high gain linear amplifier in
the TLP250.

3.3 Results and Discussion

The circuit diagram of the full H-bridge and
driver circuits is shown in Fig. 6. In this section
the design of the hardware setup. The illustrated
full H-bridge inverter consists of four IRL540N
MOSFET switches rated 100V, 36A and fast
switching. This switch has ultra-low resistance
44 m, resulting in less power dissipation and
higher efficiency.

Figure.8 illustrates the output signal of the

simulation and experimental work. The
simulations have been performed using PSIM
and Proteus software to investigate the validity
of the switching strategy.

The output value 221 V ac

18 VDC

CONTROL SIGNAL

A
K

V+
VO
V-

8
6/7
5

C1

C7 C3

100nF

Q1

C5

R1

47uF

TLP250

Resistor

22

22

Load

A
K

V+
VO
V-

8
6/7
5

C2
100nF

Q4

C6
47uF

R2

IRL540N

Q3

IRL540N

Resistor

Resistor

22

V+
VO
V-

A
K

2
3

SPWM_CONTROL SIGNAL

TLP250

PICKit 2 programmer

22

C8 47uF

H-bridge inverter
Gate driver
TLP250

C4
R4

Resistor

0 degree ofiset

U3

18 VDC

Resistor

U2
2

47uF 100nF
8
6/7
5

R3

IRL540N

Resistor

18 VDC

50 Hz Square Wave ,

Q2

IRL540N

Resistor

DC power supply

Resistor

U1
2

INVERTED_SPWM

Output a pure sine

wave

100nF

Load with
connection output

LC filter

U4
8
6/7
5

V+
VO
VTLP250

A
K

2
3

50 Hz Square Wave ,

180 degree ofiset

TLP250

Fig.6 Circuit diagram of full H-bridge and driver circuits.

Figure 7 shows that proposed hardware

setup of the implementation inverter circuit to
obtain sinusoidal wave AC output voltage with
a rated voltage magnitude of 221 V AC and
frequency 50Hz. These values are agreeing with
the voltage and frequency of the grid, the
PIC16F877A microcontroller is operated at
clock speed of 20 MHz and the control signal
sinusoidal PWM is set to be 16 KHz. The
PIC16F877A is operating 5V, generated by a
LM7805 linear voltage regulator. The compiler
editor has used mikroC PRO for PIC and
PICKit 2 programmer V1.10.
The operation of the circuit is as follows:
The MOSFET driver TLP250 is used to apply
the switching pulses coming from the
microcontroller to the MOSFET switches. The
sinusoidal PWM signals are produced by the
microcontroller and used to drive the
MOSFETs. For generating sinusoidal pulse
width modulation signal we divide each half
cycle of sine wave into 32 changes in the PWM
signal a half cycle which takes 10ms. The duty
cycle can be calculations from the following
equation:
Yi = PWMmax*sin (i*180/n), where: PWM=0-255,
(PWMmax=255) i = 0, 1, 2 ,.., n.

Fig.7. Observation hardware setup of the pure sine

wave inverter with load 11W.

Figure 8 shows the simulation and experimental

results of the four control signals operation of
the H-bridge inverter, an oscilloscope numbered
54600B with 100MHz, two channels are used to
measure the experimental results. The
PIC16f877A microcontroller is used to generate
the required PWM signals to drive and switch
the H-bridge MOSFET transistor.
The two level PWM operation of the Hbridge inverter will have the high sides of the
circuit switching at the sinusoidal PWM
(SPWM) control frequency of 16 kHz at a half
cycle which takes 10ms the different is only
SPWM1 signal leading SPWM2 by half cycle
and the low sides switching at the sine wave
lower frequency 50 Hz at a half cycle which
takes 10ms also PWM1 control signal leading
PWM2 by half cycle or 180 degree of the
switching control signals out of phase.
The two signals are then connected to
essential conditioning elements to be able to
switch ON the MOSFET at the full bridge. The
signals PWM going to the MOSFET (IRL
540N) will switch two diagonal of the full Hbridge simultaneously at one of the two halves
and the other two diagonal MOSFET (IRL
540N) at the other halves.

It has been shows [6, 7] that the dead time

measured period is of 180 s, Fig. 10 shows the
dead time measurement of the waveform in the
H-bridge inverter from the simulation. The
period of the dead time must be suitable to
avoid the problem of switch damage and
harmonic. The measurement period of the dead
time in this work is reduced to 63 sec.

63 s

SPWM1
PWM2

SPWM2
PWM1

Fig.8 illustrates microcontroller signal waveform

generated by simulation at (a) and by experimental at
(b).

Figure 9 shows the simulation and the

experimental results of output waveform of the
full bridge single phase inverter. The output
voltage of H-bridge inverter has a periodic
waveform that is not a sinusoidal wave but to
achieve a desired output AC sine wave signal by
connecting the LC filter. The frequency of the
output wave from of the simulation and the
experimental results is 50 Hz. This frequency is
exactly equal to grid frequency.

Fig.10 The simulation signal results of the dead time

measurement of the output waveform of full bridge
single phase inverter.

The output of the H-bridge inverter is shown in

Fig. 11 passed to the step up transformer and the
output of the transformer is connected to the
load through an LC filter to achieve the desired
output AC sinusoidal waveform.

Fig. 11 The simulation signal results (a) in PSIM and

(b) in proteus

Fig.9 The signal simulation (a) and experimental

signal results (b) of output waveform of full bridge
single phase inverter.

The generation of the pure sinusoidal wave

from the photovoltaic cells is the main objective
of this work. But actually, the output signal is

distorted and investigated in many researches

works [2, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17], as shown in
figures [12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17].

Fig. 17 represent reference No.17

Fig. 12 represent reference No.2

Fig. 13 represent reference No.13

Fig.11 shows the simulation results of PSIM

and Proteus output software sine waveform of
the full H-bridge single phase inverter and the
experimental results of output waveforms of the
inverter to ensure the output waveform results a
pure sine wave is practically verified. The
inverter is tested on various ac loads. As shown
in Figs. 18, 7, 19, 20.
The following conditions:
Loads 11W and 15W (lamp) connected in
parallel.
DC input voltage of 18V
Input current of 3.5A
AC output voltage 221.3V and frequency of
50Hz

Fig. 14 represent reference No.14

Fig.18 Observation hardware setup of a pure sine

Wave inverter without load.
Fig. 15 represent reference No.15

Fig. 16 represent reference No.16

7
Fig.19 Observation hardware setup of a pure sine wave
inverter with load 15W.

Fig.20 Observation setup of the pure sine wave

inverter with two load 26W

1-

2-

3-

4-

5-

4. Conclusion
The main task of this work is to develop and
improve the control circuit for a single phase
inverter which has been implemented using
PIC microcontroller.
The used method to control the inverter
switch is the SPWM technique. This method
is superior to other methods because improve
the quality of the output waveform.
The simulation results to are performed at
PSIM and Proteus software and compared
the experimental results to performed by the
LAB-module
The dead time is reduced to 63 s in the
proposed comparing with the research which
reach 180 s.
The tested inverter is loaded at various ac
loads such as 11 W, 15 W and 26W.
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Ghalib was born in Egypt. He received the B.Sc.
degree in Process Control Systems from Beni Suief
University, Egypt, in 2008. Currently, he is a
demonstrator at the Faculty of Industrial Education, Beni
Suief University, Beni Suief, Egypt. His research
activities include photovoltaic applications and renewable
energy.
M. A.

Y. S. Abdalla was born in 1971. He received the B.Sc.

and M.Sc.degrees in Electronics and Communication
Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo
University, Egypt, in 1994, and 1999 respectively and the
Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of
waterloo, Canada in 2006,. Currently, he is an assistant
Prof. in the Faculty of Industrial Education, Suez
University, Egypt. His research interests are in the area of
power electronics applications, VLSI and renewable
energy.
was born in 1949. He received the B.Sc.
degree in Electrical Engineering from Military Technical
Collage, Cairo, Egypt, and the Ph.D. in Electrical
Engineering from Universite / Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris
6), Paris, in 1972, and 1983 respectively. Currently, he is
a full time professor in the Faculty of Industrial
Education, Beni Suief University, Beni Suief, Egypt. His
research interests are in the area of Power Electronics
applications in industry, Control of Electrical Machines,
Embedded System design, Switch Mode Power Supplies,
Photovoltaic Energy Conversion.
R. M. Mostafa