Designing a self-oscillating electronic ballast with bipolar transistor

This paper presents a design methodology of the self-oscillating circuit used in electronic ballasts with bipolar transistors. The key point of the design is to consider the electronic ballast as a relay control system. Thus, an analysis as a nonlinear control system is made and a design procedure obtained using a model that represents the features of the bipolar transistor. Experimental results of electronic ballast from 32 W fluorescent lamps for different input voltage and switching frequencies are presented to demonstrate the performance and validating the analysis. Additionally the dimming capability using the self-oscillating circuit is explored.