Predictive current control offers the potential for achieving more precise current control with a minimum of distortion and harmonic noise. However, the predictive method is difficult to implement and has a greater computational burden. This paper introduces a theoretical analysis and experimental verification for an improved predictive current control technique applied to single phase grid connected voltage source inverters (VSI). The proposed technique has simple calculations. An ATmega1280 microcontroller board is used to implement the proposed technique for a simpler and cheaper control system. To enhance the current performance and to obtain a minimum of current THD, an improved tri-level PWM switching strategy is proposed. The proposed switching strategy uses six operation modes instead of four as in the traditional strategy. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the system performance with the improved switching strategy and its effect on current performance. The presented experimental results verify that the proposed technique can be implemented using fixed point 8-bit microcontroller to obtain excellent results.