Design and Implementation of a High-Power-Factor LED Driver With Zero-Voltage Switching-On Characteristics

This paper proposes a novel light-emitting diode (LED) driver consisting of a buck-boost converter and a buck converter. Each converter adopts a power MOSFET as the active switch. With no need to use any auxiliary switches or snubber circuits, both active switches can operate at zero-voltage switching on (ZVS) by freewheeling the inductor current of the converters to flow through the intrinsic diodes of the MOSFETS. The buck-boost converter is operated at discontinuous-conduction mode (DCM) to perform the function of power-factor correction to ensure almost unity power factor at the input line. The buck converter steps down the output voltage of the buck-boost converter to drive LEDs. It could be designed to operate at either DCM or continuous-conduction mode. The detailed circuit operations and analysis are provided. A prototype 60-W LED driver was built and tested. Experimental results show that the switching losses can be effectively reduced by operating the active switches at ZVS. The measured power factor and circuit efficiency are as high as 0.99% and 93%, respectively.