Robust Active LED Driver with High Power Factor and Low Total Harmonic Distortion Compatible with a Rapid-Start Ballast

A new active LED driver with high power factor (PF) and low total harmonic distortion (THD) compatible with a rapid-start ballast is proposed. An LC input filter is attached to the ballast to increase PF and reduce THD. A boost converter is then installed to regulate the LED current, where an unstable operating region has been newly identified. The unstable region is successfully stabilized by feedback control with two zeroes. The extremely high overall system of the 10th order is completely analyzed by the newly introduced phasor transformed circuits in static and dynamic analyses. Although a small DC capacitor is utilized, the flicker percentage of the LED is drastically mitigated to 1% by the fast controller. The proposed LED driver that employs a simple controller with a start-up circuit is verified by extensive experiments whose results are in good agreement with the design.