Abstract In this paper an analytical design method is proposed for constant voltage controlled inverter based DG with frequency dependent ZIP–Exponential static load model to obtain proper inverter output control and successful islanding detection. The proposed technique is aimed to eliminate the dependency of DG operation point on anti-islanding performance which is unavoidable in case of traditional control strategy. The generalized formulae are derived for calculating the upper and lower limits of the voltage gain, and it is recommended to select the voltage gain within the designed range for effective islanding detection. The proposed approach is tested in MATLAB/Simulink environment and result shows that the proposed scheme is found to be highly effective in islanding detection considering complex network configurations with single and multiple DG systems. The proposed control scheme is able to detect islanding within 10 ms (half cycle) from the event inception, showing the fastness of the developed technique. It is also observed that the percentage of voltage and current THD of the proposed scheme is within permissible limits, indicate that the power quality of the inverter is not degraded by the proposed control strategy, and thus overcomes the drawback of existing active anti-islanding techniques.