An Integrated Circuit Based, Single-Inductor-Dual-Output Buck LED Driver for Dimmable and Color Temperature Tunable Indoor Lighting Application

Abstract

Tunability of correlated color temperature (CCT) and dimmability are the two major sought after features of functional solid-state lighting. This paper presents a low-cost, efficient, single-inductor-dual-output buck driver that facilitates CCT-control and dimming of a light emitting diode (LED) module composed of cool-white and warm-white chips. The proposed driver is designed based on two familiar integrated circuits (ICs), namely LM2596 and NE556. LM2596 serves as the main switching regulator and amplitude modulation (AM) controller whereas NE556 serves as the constant-frequency, dual-output pulse-width-modulation (PWM) controller. The exponential model of LED is exploited for improved estimation of the design parameters of the LED module and the driver circuit. The developed driver prototype is tested for its electrical, photometric, and colorimetric performances. The driver offers a full-load efficiency of about 90% for a 12-W test LED module. Under different operating modes, the LED system can produce warm, cool, or neutral white light and at the same time, the produced illuminance can be varied over a wide range. Moreover, the light flicker is imperceptible since the PWM frequency is set according to IEEE-1789 guideline.