A Current-Sourced LED Driver Compatible With Fluorescent Lamp Ballasts

Abstract

A light-emitting diode (LED) driver compatible with fluorescent lamp (FL) ballasts is presented for a lamp-only replacement without rewiring the existing lamp fixture. Ballasts have a common function to regulate the lamp current, despite widely different circuit topologies. In this paper, magnetic and electronic ballasts are modeled as nonideal current sources and a current-sourced boost converter, which is derived from the duality, is adopted for the power conversion from ballasts. A rectifier circuit with capacitor filaments is proposed to interface the converter with the four-wire output of the ballast. A digital controller emulates the high-voltage discharge of the FL and operates adaptively with various ballasts. A prototype 20-W LED driver for retrofitting T8 36-W FL is evaluated with both magnetic and electronic ballasts. In addition to wide compatibility, accurate regulation of the LED current within 0.6% error and high driver efficiency over 89.7% are obtained.