LLC LED Driver with Current-Sharing Capacitor Having Low Voltage Stress

Abstract

In this paper, an LLC light-emitting diode (LLC LED) driver based on the current-sharing capacitor is presented. In the proposed LED driver, the LLC resonant converter is used to step down the high input voltage, to provide galvanic isolation, to offer a constant current for LEDs. Moreover, the current-sharing capacitor connected to the central-tapped point of the secondary-side winding is used to balance the currents in two LED strings. By doing so, the voltage stress on this capacitor is quite low. Above all, the equivalent forward voltages of the two LED strings are generally influenced by the temperature and the LED current, and this does not affect the current-sharing performance, as will be demonstrated by experiment on the difference in number of LEDs between the two LED strings. In addition, only the current in one LED string is sensed and controlled by negative feedback control, while the current in the other LED string is determined by the current-sharing capacitor. Moreover, this makes the current control so easy. Afterwards, the basic operating principles and analyses are given, particularly for how to derive the effective resistive load from the LED string. Eventually, some experimental results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed LED driver.