A Soft-Switching Interleaved Buck–Boost LED Driver With Coupled Inductor

Abstract

In this article, a novel dc–dc light-emitting diode driver employing an interleaved converter is proposed and analyzed. The circuit topology mainly consists of two parallel buck–boost converters. A coupled inductor, which is composed of a magnetic core and two windings, is used to replace the energy storage inductors of the two buck–boost converters. This not only does not add any components, but also saves a magnetic core. The buck–boost converters are designed to operate near boundary conduction mode. Due to the characteristics of magnetic flux balance, the magnetic-excited current can be converted between the windings of the coupled inductor. By using the magnetic-excited current to release the charge stored in the parasitic capacitors of the active switches, these switches can fulfill zero-voltage switching <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">on</small> (ZVS) without the use of any auxiliary switches, active clamping circuits, or snubber circuits. Moreover, the freewheel diodes of both buck–boost converters can achieve zero-current switching <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">off</small> (ZCS). The steady-state analyses for different operation modes are provided, and the mathematical equations for designing circuit components are conducted. Finally, a 200-W prototype circuit was built and tested to verify the analytical predictions. According to the experimental results, all the semiconductor devices are operated at either ZVS or ZCS, and the circuit efficiency as high as 95.0% is measured. Satisfactory performance has verified the feasibility of the proposed converter.