Control of a Single-Phase PFC Preregultaor using an 8-bit Microcontroller

Presented in this paper is a hybrid power factor correction (PFC) preregulator controlled by a single microcontroller. By using the on-board peripherals of this microcontroller, no complex algorithm or external multiplier was required to perform the PFC function correctly, and thus a one-chip solution has been achieved. The proposed hybrid PFC preregulator has been tested in the laboratory. The measured power factor was above 0.99, and the output voltage was precisely controlled. Experimental results also indicate that the hybrid PFC preregulator can operate satisfactorily over a range of input voltages and output loads. The results presented in this paper demonstrate that it is possible to implement a high performance PFC preregulator using a single microcontroller without more expensive DSPs or other complicated hardware. Because of the simplicity of the circuit, the proposed PFC preregulator has low cost and high reliability.