ISSN 2249-6343
International Journal of Computer Technology and Electronics Engineering (IJCTEE)
Volume 2, Issue 3, June 2012
Harmonic Detection using Microcontroller
Jaipreet Kaur Bhatti, Deepak Asati
Abstract--- Harmonic distortion meter is an instruments that
measure harmonic distortion or phase position or simply has
been designed for measuring the quality of AC supply.
Harmonic distortion is a common problem in power systems,
data processing equipment and adjustable speed drives. In
communications applications, harmonic distortion meters
are used to determine when the original frequency
transmitted is split into multiple frequencies due to
irregularities in the line. Harmonic distortion meters are
important for analyzing the quality of power coming into a
system and for determining what is causing the problem.
Keywords--- DFT, microcontroller (ATMEGA16), Harmonic
detection.
I. INTRODUCTION
This thesis basically employs a device which shows a
method for finding the amplitude of the fundamental
frequency and the 3rd harmonic of AC voltage signals.
The technique is consummate for identifying the
distortions in the AC voltages .For example electronic
devices having nonlinear characteristics being used at
home and office are mostly computer based equipment
with a low power factor switch mode power supply. These
power supply sections include charging capacitors which
draw current at peak voltages. Thus for a given feeder
having finite impedance there can be a voltage drop near
the peak voltage resulting in flattened top distortion of AC
voltage. To identify these distortions we analyze the
output signal in the frequency domain by utilizing
efficient digital processing techniques. In this thesis a
feature based method is developed to efficiently perform
the frequency synthesis and further perform correlation
between the output signal and a varying sinusoid signal
Fig. 1: Flattened top AC voltage caused by a low
power factor switch mode power supply.
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This paper is organized as follows:
Section 1- Introduction and need of harmonics detection.
Section 2- Explains Solution based on phase lock loop and
its drawbacks. Section 3- Detection of harmonics using
DFT and its advantages. Section 4- Hardware and circuit
required for its working. Section 5- Gives the conclusions
of the present work.
II. PHASE LOCK LOOP & ITS DRAWBACKS
The various harmonics in a power system are typically
measured with a heterodyne receiver if we are using
analog methods or by a FFT (Fast Fourier Transform)
when digital methods are being used. The harmonics can
be analyzed over a wide range of frequencies by means of
these methods. However, since the circuit configurations
that are needed can become very complicated, the
equipment tends to be too expensive for practical use. This
paper presents a novel harmonic meter using a PLL (Phase
Locked Loop) circuit. By means of the phase feedback
loop, a reference sinusoidal wave is locked on to the input
signal along with the harmonics that we wish to measure,
and hence the corresponding harmonic component in the
input signal is easily detected. The effectiveness of the
proposed harmonic meter is confirmed by experiment.
Disadvantage comes to play in case of wrong manual
tuning for detection of sinusoidal signal for desired
frequency. Multiple frequencies just in case of 2 nd order
and 3rd order require use of separate phase detectors which
makes it complex and needs fine adjustments. In total
harmonics distortion computation a separate logic is
required hence hardwired circuit here in inapplicable in
case of reading manipulations and processing. In this idea
we are using a microcontroller which enrich the above
condition by making soft coding approach and hence can
be used in performing discrete Fourier transform results.
An 8 bit RISC microcontroller ATMEGA16 can provide
us 16MIPS of processing power using 16Mhz of clock
crystal, along with that it contains a 8 channel 10 bit ADC
which suits our application.
III. DETECTION OF HARMONICS USING DFT
Proposed methodology: In the proposed method a
harmonic meter using a microcontroller is designed . The
meter is built with a microcontroller and the full wave
rectifier front-end circuit. The input signal to the 10-bit
ADC is full wave rectified.
 ISSN 2249-6343
International Journal of Computer Technology and Electronics Engineering (IJCTEE)
Volume 2, Issue 3, June 2012

The software performs DFT calculation finding the

amplitude of the fundamental frequency and the 3rd
harmonic. The distortion is computed by the ratio of the
amplitude of the 3rd harmonic to the fundamental
frequency. The effectiveness of the proposed harmonic
meter is confirmed by experiment.

A. Total Harmonic Distortion, THD

To measure the wave shape distortion, we use the quantity

of the Total Harmonic Distortion, THD (equation 1). THD
is the ratio of the power of harmonic components to the
power of fundamental frequency. Our concern is the
voltage distortion we can just find the sum of the RMS of
the harmonic components, Vn and the RMS of the
fundamental frequency, V1.
Advantage of DFT:- Since the AC signal has symmetry
between positive cycle and negative cycle. We can find
the harmonic component by capturing only half cycle.
This reduces computing time by half.

THD = *100, n=2, 3.N

Most of the harmonic problem is caused by the 3rd

component. Since the 3rd harmonic is the 2nd highest
energy from the fundamental component. So we interest to
find only the 3rd harmonic distortion using equation 2.

HD = *100

Discrete Fourier Transform, DFT

Fig. 2: The 32-point sample half period AC input
We may decompose the periodic waveform, f(t) into the signal
summation of a number of sinusoids waveform easily
using the Discrete Fourier Transform (equation 3). A0 is IV. BLOCK DIAGRAM OF PROPOSED DESIGN
the amplitude of DC components. For AC voltage
waveform, A0 is zero.

Bridge
Xin [32]
Rectifier
Capture 32
samples.
Amplitude of
Determining
each
The amplitude for each harmonic can be computed from Bv & Cv for
harmonics-
equation 4. 1st &3rd
Harmonics.

Coefficien 3rd order Result

t Bv & Cv THD= on
for 1st&3rd (V3/V1)* LCD
order 100 will be
The coefficients Bv and Cv for each harmonic are easily harmonics shown.
calculated by multiplying the corresponding sine wave .
and cosine wave to the input signal respectively (equation Fig.3. Block diagram of proposed design.
5 and 6). Where delta t is time between sample, T is
period, Vy is input signal.

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 ISSN 2249-6343
International Journal of Computer Technology and Electronics Engineering (IJCTEE)
Volume 2, Issue 3, June 2012

High quality power supply has a perfect sinusoidal
signal with constant frequency and amplitude. On the
other hand, the use of nonlinear devices and the
time-varying loads in the electric power system is
widespread and is growing with even bigger pace. Such
devices and loads are consuming distorted current from
the power system grid.To preserve high power quality, the
most important indices, such as harmonics, sags, swells,
short interruptions, imbalances, and flickers, ideally
have to be eliminated. Inrecent years, researchers have
been developing tools for accurate power quality
analysis, as well as devices for mitigation of power
supply imperfections.
If an electrical quantity is made to vary directly in
proportion to this value (temperature etc) then what we
have is Analogue signal. Now we have
we have brought a physical quantity into electrical
domain. The electrical quantity in most case is voltage. To
bring this quantity into digital domain we have to convert
this into digital form. For this a ADC or analog to digital
converter is needed. Most modern MCU including AVRs
has an ADC on chip. An ADC converts an input voltage
into a number. An ADC has a resolution. A 10 Bit ADC
has a range of 0-1023. (2^10=1024) The ADC also has a
Reference voltage (ARef). When input voltage is GND the
output is 0 and when input voltage is equal to ARef the
output is 1023. So the input range is 0-ARef and digital
output is 0-1023.

V. HARDWARE AND CIRCUIT DESIGN OF PROPOSED METER

Fig.4 Harmonic detection meter using microcontroller

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 ISSN 2249-6343
International Journal of Computer Technology and Electronics Engineering (IJCTEE)
Volume 2, Issue 3, June 2012

Frequency ,Phase, and Amplitude Tracking in Aircraft Electrical

VI. CIRCUIT DESCRIPTION
From the above design, first of all input signal is applied to
the circuit which is 220Vac. The bridge rectifier rectifies
the ac input to the pulsating dc, which would further made
constant 5V with the help of filter-capacitor arrangement
and voltage stabilizer so that any change in ac would not
proportionally change dc. The dc output is given to the
variable resistor which is used to select the voltage which
in case of PLL cannot be done because it needs a separate
phase detector for different frequencies (voltages) this is
then applied to the digital oscilloscope which shows the
total coverage of half cycle by capturing 32 samples. The
output from this is given to the microcontroller where the
software performs the DFT calculations and the final
results are displayed on the LCD i.e. the fundamental
frequency, the third order harmonic component and the
harmonic distortion in percentage.
Block diagram of fig.3 shows the step by step procedure of
operation.
Systems,
[3] M. Karimi-Ghartemani and A.K. Ziarani, A nonlinear
timefrequency analysis method, IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol.
52, no. 6, Jun. 2004, pp. 15851595
[4] Jovan M. KNEEVI1, Vladimir A. KATI2 , The Hybrid Method
for On-line Harmonic Analysis, 1Brose Fahrzeugteile GmbH &
CO. Kommanditgesellschaft, Hallstadt, D-96103, Germany
2University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Novi
Sad,21000, Serbia.
[5] Aboul-Seoud, A.K.; El-Badawy, E.-S.A.; Mokhtar, A.; El-Masry,
W.; El-Barbry, M.; Hafez, A.E.-D.S.;, A simple 8-bit digital
microcontroller implementation for chaotic sequence generation,
National Radio Science Conference (NRSC), 2011 28th Digital
Object Identifier: 10.1109/NRSC.2011.5873617 Publication Year:
2011 , Page(s): 1 9

TOOL USED FOR SIMULATION -- Proteus

Professional 7

VII. RESULTS & CONCLUSION

Fundamental frequency 234V

3rd order harmonics 20V

harmonic distortion 8.7%

As a matter of fact, the frequency analysis of discrete time

signals is conveniently performed on a digital signal
processor which in our case is designed and programmed
in an embedded microcontroller. The project approach
applies a computational convenient representation of
discrete time signals known as Discrete Fourier transform
to estimate the fundamental and third harmonic frequency
of the signal. The computation of this ratio can identify the
distortion in ac voltage while being drawn through
different nonlinear devices so that after detecting the
harmonic component we can improve the quality of an ac
waveform.

REFERENCES
[1] Isamu Yamamoto, Keiju Matsui, Kazuo Tsuboi , A Harmonic meter
using a phase- lock- loop , Chubu University, Dep. Electrical Eng.
Kasugai ,487-8501, Japan(2001). E-Mail:keiju@isc.chubu.ac.jp.

[2] Francesco Cupertino, Member, IEEE, Elisabetta Lavopa, Pericle

Zanchetta, Member, IEEE, Mark Sumner, Senior Member, IEEE,
and Luigi Salvatore, Running DFT-Based PLL Algorithm for

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