A Topology Review of LED Drivers without Electrolytic Capacitors

LED lighting has now become very common due to their inherent advantages like long life, efficiency and so on. The advantages of LEDs are to some extent inured by the driver circuitry that is required to be used with them. The presence of an electrolytic capacitor as an energy buffer and for filtering reduces the life of a LED driver. Many suggestions have been put forth in literature to reduce the amount of capacitive filtering that is required and thereby replace electrolytic capacitors with the more reliable ceramic or other types of capacitors. This paper compiles and classifies the different schemes that are available in literature, reviews those that are based on flyback converters and makes a relative evaluation.