A Novel High-Power-Factor Electrolytic-Capacitorless LED Driver Based on Ripple Port

In this article, a novel high-power-factor electrolytic-capacitorless light-emitting diode (LED) driver based on the use of a ripple port is presented. The ripple port consists of adding an extra power processing circuit at the output of the converter that injects energy to compensate for the output current and voltage ripples. In this work, the main converter is built by using a flyback converter operating in the discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). The ripple port is implemented by adding an extra winding to the flyback coupled inductors, together with an extra switch, a capacitor, and an inductor. The additional switch is used to inject energy to the output in the time intervals, in which the flyback output current is low, thus reducing the output current ripple. The proposed converter is analyzed in detail, and a design methodology is proposed. A design example for a 27-V/1-A LED lamp is presented. Simulation and laboratory experiments have also been carried out. It is demonstrated that the proposed solution can achieve a reduction on the output current ripple of around 65% compared to the solution without ripple port for the same total capacitance and maintain a high power factor of 0.994.