This paper proposes a new pulse width modulation (PWM) technique to overcome the low performance of a conventional pulse width modulation control strategy for an active filter. In this design, the desired output voltage is achieved by comparing the desired reference waveform (modulating signal) with a high-frequency triangular 'carrier waveform'. By this scheme, the voltage source inverter can be controlled by the sine pulse width modulation technique (SPWM) with the DC voltage amplitude and finally the total harmonic distortion (THD) can be reduced to the limit of IEEE harmonic standard. The performance of the SPWM technique and the harmonic limit is analyzed using Matlab-Simulink toolbox © 2014 IEEE.