International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics

Volume 114 No. 7 2017, 123-127

ISSN: 1311-8080 (printed version); ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)
url: http://www.ijpam.eu
Special Issue
ijpam.eu

A DC-DC converter for low

power applications using
Arduino Uno Microcontroller
Devendra Potnuru1, Javvaji Anilkumar2
1Associate Professor, EEE, GMRIT, Rajam,

Srikakulam, AP.
devendra.p@gmrit.org
2PG Scholar, EEE, GMRIT, Rajam,

Srikakulam, AP.
javvajianilkumar123@gmail.com

April 14,15 - 2017

Abstract
Switching mode power converter is widely used in
industrial, commercial and household applicationsdue
to their advantages.A dc–dc converter with a low cost
microcontroller is very much required for lower
applications. Therefore design of a front end converter
dc-dc buck converter is very much important for low
power applications. In the present work a dc-dc buck
converter is designed and controlled usinglow cost
Aurdino Uno microcontroller. It is based on ATmega328
processor. The validity of this work is tested using a
laboratory prototype.

Keywords : DC-DC converter, Buck converter,

Aurdino Uno
1. Introduction
The DC-DC converters are emerging inlow power conventional dc
and solar powered applications. A buck converter is a single
transistor based low cost converter for obtaining the variable dc
from the fixed dc source[1]. It is possible simply by varying the duty
ratio of the converter to control the output voltage in one stage. The
unregulated input voltage is converted in to regulated voltage by

123
International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

means of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique with a high

switching frequency. Mostly the power switching devices like
transistor, MOSFET or IGBT are used as switching devices in the
Switched Mode Power conversion. These devices are called as self-
commutating devices. They don’t require additional commutation
circuit to turn-off the device.
Designing of the dc-dc buck-converter is based on frequency of
switch-on and in turn selection of R and C values. Generally as a
thumb rule, one can use the switching frequency is more than or
equals to 100 times the switching period of the power transistor.
However, the tradeoff involved in this method is that the higher
switching frequency, more losses during on and off of the device and
leads to decrease the over all performance of the dc converter. The
output voltage and current waveforms of the buck-converter
contains harmonics and they need to be eliminated using the low
pass filter. The circuit diagram of the buck converter is as shown in
Fig.1. The principle of operation of Buck converter is having two
modes of operation[2]. When the MOSFET (or) IGBT turns on the
inductor stores energy in the form of a magnetic field and discharges
as soon as it turns off. The converter filter is designed in such a way
that it should give constant and negligible ripple voltage to the load
and is obtained by selecting R and C with a good time constant
which is more than the frequency of switching. Many researchers
proposed the control methods for dc-dc buck converter[2]–[6],
however in the present work the Aurdino based controller is
proposed for open loop control of the Buck converter.

2. Design and control of Buck Converter

The buck-converter parameters are designed based on the equations
(1) to (2) and they are connected as shown in Fig.2. Aurdino Uno
based is used for controlling the MOSFET. However, one might
know that it can generate 5 volts PWM pulse and hence a gate driver
circuit is needed to turn-on the MOSFET. In the present
work,6N135 is used for drive the PWM pulse.

Gate
Microcontroller Driver

Fig. 3 Control of Buck converter using Microcontroller

124
International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

Aurdino Uno is a low cost microcontroller and is based on

ATmega328/P. The MATLAB also supports the Arduino and
communicate through the computer serial port. One can refer I/O
package of Aurdino[7] and block diagram for hardware
implementation of the converter is shown in Fig.2. Snapshot of the
hardware implementation is shown in Fig.3. Design of buck
converter is based on the following equations (1) and (2)[1].
(𝑉 −𝑉 )∗𝐷
𝐿 = 𝑠𝑓 ∗∆𝑖𝑜 (1)
𝑠 𝐿

𝑉𝑠 𝐷(1−𝐷)
𝐶= (2)
8𝐿𝑓𝑠 2 ∆𝑣𝐿

Where D refers duty ratio, ∆iL indicates ripple in current,∆vL is the

voltage ripple,fs is frequency of switching, L, C refers to inductor,
and capacitor respectively,Vs is the input voltage and Vo is the output
voltage.
In this work, the parameters Vs =30V, L=2.98mH, C=99.52μH,
R=100 ohms, fs =20kHz are considered for development of the buck
converter prototype. Fig.4 shows the snapshot of the laboratory
prototype of buck converter.

Fig.4 Hardware implementation using Aurdino Uno ATmega328/P

controller

3. Result Analysis and discussion

Experimental results of the buck converter aregiven in Fig.5 and
Fig.6 respectively for duty ratios of 50% and 30% for a voltage

125
 International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

setting of 30V. The output voltage of 14.4 V is obtained at a duty

ratio of 0.5 and is depicted in the Fig.5 and similarly for the duty
ratio of 0.17, the output voltage is around 10V.

Fig.5 Output voltage for the duty ratios of 0.5 and 0.3

4. Conclusion
In the present work a front end dc-dc buck converter is designed for
low power applications and successfully controlled using a low cost
Aurdino Uno ATmega328 controller. The validity of this work is
tested using a laboratory prototype for different duty ratios in open
loop control. The work can be extended for solar powered dc-dc
converter with better control strategy in a closed loop.

5. References
[1] F. L. Luo, Advanced dc / dc converters,CRC press,2003
[2] V. P. Nelson, “design and implementation of digital controllers
for buck.” thesis,2006
[3] “Design and Implementation of ZCS Buck Converter,” no.
10602019, pp. 1–51.
[4] Z. Rasin and M. F. Rahman, “Control of Bidirectional DC-DC
Converter for Battery Storage System in Grid-connected Quasi-
Z- Source PV Inverter,” pp. 205–210, 2015.
[5] A. Improved, S. B. Converter, and W. Coupled, “An Improved
Soft-Switching Buck Converter With Coupled Inductor,” vol. 28,
no. 11, pp. 4885–4891, 2013.
[6] K. Yao, W. Tang, W. Hu, and J. Lyu, “A Current-Sensorless
Online ESR and C Identification Method for Output Capacitor
of Buck Converter,” vol. 30, no. 12, pp. 6993–7005, 2015.
[7] T. Atmel, H. Performance, L. Power, A. Avr, and M. Family,
“ATmega328 / P,” 2016.

126
127
128