Embedded System Implementation of Shunt Active Power Filter with Direct Compensation Component Generation Using Linear Operational Amplifiers

In this paper, the principles, the design, the methodology of low cost implementation and the results of implementation of a shunt active power filter (SAPF) in the embedded system environment are presented. The system for which the SAPF is considered has a combination of linear reactive load and a three-phase-fed diode bridge rectifier that drives an RL load. The generation of the compensating signal or the reference signal is based upon the direct calculations implemented using the linear operational amplifiers. Further, the generation of the pulse width modulation (PWM) pulses is much similar to the conventional sinusoidal PWM but implemented in the embedded system platform. In this work, the built-in PWM and ADC sections of the microcontroller PIC 16F877A have been utilized for generating the PWM pulses without the requirement of an explicit carrier signal. The proposed method has been validated in MATLAB SIMULINK environment and also by an experimental prototype.