Active power filter design and simulation by combining LabVIEW and simulink

Active power filter (APF) is an effective approach in harmonic suppression. Traditional researches on APF are mostly conducted in Matlab/Simulink platform, which can validate the APF algorithm and simulate the compensation effect. However, such APF cannot be applied to practice. LabVIEW is a standard software program used in data collection and instrument control. It can monitor and control the real system with external equipments such as Data Acquisition Card (DAQ) and mutual inductor. In this paper, we constructed a close-loop system with APF in the Matlab/Simulink environment to validate the feasibility of the algorithm we adopted. Then we built program blocks that realized the same algorithm in LabVIEW, and detected harmonic current in the open-loop Simulink model with Simulation Interface Toolkit (SIT). The result indicated that the harmonic current detected by LabVIEW is the same as that detected by APF in the closed-loop system. Following program in LabVIEW could generate pulse signals to control the switches in the inverter of APF via external equipments, so the APF based on LabVIEW can be applied to practice.