A dual-path,current-sensing resistor-free boost LED driver with fast PWM dimming

A boost LED driver featuring a high PWM dimming ratio and optimized efficiency is presented. This LED driver, which has a low dropout voltage and is able to drive 3-7 LEDs in series with constant output current and fast PWM dimming, provides an alternative technique for brightness adjustment. A dual-path control scheme with automatic switching and state maintenance is proposed. Meanwhile, a cascode current mirror structure is applied with the output transistor multiplexed as an LED PWM dimming transistor. Implemented in 0.5 #m 25 V BCD process, the measurement results show that a voltage conversion range of 5 V input to 6-24 V output with constant output current is obtained. With automatically switching dual-path control and an optimized current mirror, the response time during PWM dimming is reduced to as low as 240 ns and the efficiency keeps above 89% over a wide PWM dimming ratio @ 250 mA output current.

A novel dimmable LED driver with soft-start and UVLO circuits

A fully integrated LED driver based on a current mode PWM boost DC-DC converter with constant output current is proposed. In order to suppress the inrush of current and the overshoot voltage at the start up state, a soft-start circuit is adopted. Additionally, to adjust the LED brightness without color variation over the full dimming range and achieve high efficiency, a PWM dimming circuit is presented. Furthermore, to keep the loop stability of the LED driver, an internal slope compensation network is designed to avoid the sub-harmonic oscillation when the duty cycle exceeds 50%. Finally, a UVLO circuit is adopted to improve the reliability of the LED driver against the input voltage changing. The LED driver has been fabricated with a standard 0.5/xm CMOS process, and only occupies 1.21 × 0.76 mm^2. Experimental results show that the brightness of the LED can be adjusted by an off- chip PWM signal with a wide adjusting range. The inductor current and output current increase smoothly over the whole load range. The chip is in the UVLO condition when the input voltage is below 2.18 V and has achieved about 137 μs typical start-up time.

Improvements in performance and reliability for segmented linear LED drivers

Several improvements have been made to the conventional segmented linear light-emitting diode （LED） driver topology to enhance the performance and reliability of the system. A compensation technology is proposed to adaptively adjust the impedance of the sensing circuit to keep the output luminance constant in case of line volt- age variations. Based on the proposed technology, an active over temperature protection technique is presented to constrain the averaged LED current according to the junction temperature to prevent the driving IC from overheating. Otherwise, a pulse width modulation dimming circuitry which is compatible with input logic level ranging from 1.8 to 20 V is proposed. The proposed technologies are implemented in a 1.0μm 5/20/500 V BCD technol- ogy with three high voltage MOSFETs integrated on chip. The experimental results show that within 220± 15% V, 50 Hz AC line-voltage variation, the output luminance is restrained to 4% in total. The output luminance can also be effectively controlled by the PWM dimming circuitry, and a dimming range of 95% is achieved with good linearity.