Phase-controlled electronic ballast with dimmable linear and wide range features

This article presents the design and implementation of a phase-controlled electronic ballast system with dimmable linear and wide range features. The proposed system includes a TRIAC phase controller, a boost converter, a half-bridge inverter, and a system micro-controller. The firing angle of the phase controller is sensed as a reference to adjust the output voltage of the converter and switching frequency of the inverter to achieve linearity and wide range for dimming performance of the lamp. The modeling, analysis, and design of the phase-controlled electronic ballast are proposed in this article. The system controller is implemented using a low-cost 8-bit MCU and the designed system is practical in real world use. Hardware measurements have been presented to verify the usefulness of proposed control method of the two-stage electronic ballast in this article.