Comparative Performance Evaluation of Two LED Driver Architectures for Residential Lighting Applications

The adoption of LED lighting solutions is a widely perceived reality, witnessed in a multitude of contexts, including residential buildings. Increasing research efforts have been developed in recent years in the field of LED lighting, which translate into a wide range of LED driver configurations, whose target applications are yet to be clearly established. On the other hand, the significant mismatch between the lifetime of LED driver and LED devices poses a relevant hurdle to the full exploitation of the lifetime of LED devices. Altogether, these factors lead to a pivotal question regarding the enlightened selection of the power conversion systems for driving LED lighting systems, in residential buildings. To that end, this paper develops a performance evaluation of potential candidates for driving residential LED lighting systems, establishing a comparison among them. The evaluation of the performance is supported by the analysis of parameters like the fault tolerance, conversion efficiency, and stress imposed to the components. Moreover, a novel reconfiguration strategy is proposed and evaluated, aiming to improve the response of the lighting system in the presence of failures on the power semiconductors. Conclusions taken from the comparative study are supported through simulation results.