An AC Input Switching-Converter-Free LED Driver With Low-Frequency-Flicker Reduction

This paper presents a novel switching-converter-free ac-dc light-emitting diode (LED) driver with low-frequency-flicker reduction for general lighting applications. The proposed driving solution can minimize the system size as it enables the monolithic integration of the controller and power transistors while both the bulky off-chip electrolytic capacitors and magnetics are eliminated. Moreover, the driver can effectively reduce the harmful optical flicker at the double-line-frequency by employing a novel quasi-constant power control scheme while maintaining high efficiency and a good power factor (PF). The proposed driver is implemented with a single controller integrated circuit chip, which includes the controller and high-voltage power transistors, and the off-chip diode bridge and valley-fill circuit. The chip is fabricated with a 0.35-μm 120-V high-voltage CMOS process and occupies 1.85 mm
²
. The driver can provide up to 7.8-W power to the LED and achieves 87.6% peak efficiency and an over 0.925 PF with only 17.3% flicker from a 110-V
_ac
60-Hz input.