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E-mail: Jack.Smith@cliftonlaboratories.com

One project I've started requires measuring the 60 Hz power line frequency with reasonable accuracy. This turns out to be more complicated than one might think. There are two main issues:

• Obtaining an isolated sample of the line voltage
• Measuring the frequency

These reasons, amongst others, make another approach more attractive—making a direct connection  to the power line, but isolating the associated electronics from the rest of the instrument with optical isolators. I'll have more to say about these aspects of the project as it further develops.

To measure period, the normal method is to use a high frequency auxiliary signal and count the number of auxiliary pulses during a period. In essence, this reverses the signal and gate functionality in the normal counter arrangement.

My work is with a PIC18F4620 microcontroller, with a 40 MHz clock. Using its internal counter/timer functionality, the high frequency auxiliary signal is one instruction cycle, one-fourth the clock or 100 ns. A 60 Hz signal has a period of 16.6666... milliseconds, or,  measured in terms of instruction cycles or "ticks," 166,666.666...ticks. With an error of ±1 tick at the start and end of the gate period, theoretically we can determine the input period with an error of about 1 part in 80,000, or 0.0012%. This assumes there are no error sources in the rest of the circuitry, of course, so it is a highly optimistic target.

Our algorithm in pseudo-code is:

Set counter = 0
Wait for a zero crossing
Repeat
    Increment Counter
Until 2nd zero crossing
Stop counter

Each counter increment  represents 100 ns in the 18F4620 operating with a 40 MHz clock. There are a few details to be taken care of in this approach, including  the fact that the 18F4620 counters are only 16 bits wide, and we need 18 bits to measure a full cycle's period at 50 or 60 Hz, but these are details not too hard to deal with.

The tricky part is  the "wait for zero  crossing" appearing in both the start and stop portions of the algorithm. There is an excellent review of a variety of methods of detecting power line zero crossings at R.W. Wall, Simple Methods for Detecting Zero Crossing well worth reading.

In the course of working on algorithms, so far I've been working with a relatively simple arrangement, illustrated below.
 

In order to measure the period, we wish to convert the input sine wave to logic levels—0 when the V2 is negative and +5 volts when it is positive. Since we've shifted V2's reference by 2.5 volts, one way to accomplish the digital conversion is to use an op-amp running open loop as a comparator, as is done in U2.  One input is biased at +2.5V whilst the other has the level shifted 60 Hz input signal. When the level shifted 60 Hz signal is less than 2.5 V, U2 saturates positive at +5V output and when it is less than 2.5 V, U2 saturates negative, or 0 V output.

I originally used a real comparator, an LM311, instead of an op amp. Comparators are faster than op-amps and are tolerant of high differential voltages between the inputs. In this case, the MCP6021 is tolerant of  the input voltage differential. More importantly, so far my circuit is on a plug-in solderless breadboard and the LM311's fast output transitions produce unwanted spikes and ringing. The slower MCP6021 is an advantage in this case. When it comes time to make the prototype PCB, I'll revisit the true comparator versus op-amp open loop choice.

The oscilloscope capture below shows U2's output. No gross ringing or overshoot.
 

This breadboard uses a ceramic resonator as a  time base, so the absolute frequency is not accurate. More importantly, however, is the standard deviation; 0.0173 Hz, or 1 part in 3500. this is perhaps 20 time worse than our theoretical maximum accuracy.
 

The variance is the square of the standard deviation, or 4 µs, so the variance of four transitions used in the measured period data is 16 µs. The standard deviation of the four transitions considered in series is therefore the square root of the variance or 4 µs. Considering the rough nature of the jitter estimate, this is not bad agreement with the measured 4.85 µs standard deviation.
 

The slope of a sine wave with angular frequency ω and amplitude A (A sin(ωt)) can be estimated by differentiating it at the zero crossing point. The derivative is Aω cos(0) or Aω. In the test signal, A = 1.5 V and ω is 2πf where f = 60 Hz, which is 565.5 volts/sec. We can assume for small  time periods the derivative is close to the differential ΔV/Δt. Hence, 4.85 µs corresponds to a voltage or noise value of 4.85 x 10-6 sec x 565 V/sec = 1.3 millivolts.

This is a reasonable amount of noise considering the noise problems inherent in solderless plugboards. It also suggests that a low noise PCB layout should improve our noise performance and hence reduced jitter in the time domain.