Comparative study of LED ballasts for different light regulation techniques

Electronic ballast constitutes a significant part of a luminary equipped with light emitting diodes. Its topology affects strongly the energy efficiency, controllability, as well as weight, size and cost of the luminary. Therefore, this part of the luminary has to be designed especially carefully. Previous research has covered these parameters of dimmable ballasts of several topologies and different modulation techniques intended for the fluent mode light regulation. The findings show that buck topology is preferable for many reasons. This part of research extends the estimation procedure proposed earlier to the step mode and pulse mode light regulators. The controllability and power losses of regulators were taken as criteria for our comparison. First, the controllability and losses were analytically estimated and then the obtained result was experimentally verified. In the concluding part, the preferable light regulation technique is presented.