In this paper, an adaptive carrier based pulse width modulation scheme for controlling current output of shunt active harmonic filter (SAHF) is proposed. The control strategy adapts the magnitude of the carrier signal in accordance with the modulation signal so as to generate appropriate pulse width for SAHF for synthesizing desired harmonic current at the point of common coupling (PCC). The technique adapted considers the error magnitude and polarity with the feedback of generated pulse width modulated(PWM) signals. To ameliorate the tracking of reference current, with fast response and defined switching frequency, the variable parametric PWM technique (VP-PWM) is implemented and validated for a distribution network feeding a balanced/unbalanced nonlinear loads. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is validated using MATLAB/Simulink based simulations and the controller performance metrics are evaluated. The results proves the feasibilityand effectiveness of the proposed control strategy to operate with SAHFin regulating current harmonics in the distribution network. © 2021 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.