Integrated Asymmetrical Half-Bridge Zeta (AHBZ) Converter for DC/DC Stage of LED Driver With Wide Output Voltage Range and Low Output Current

Abstract

The conventional half-bridge converter for a dc/dc stage in wide-output-voltage and constant-output-current applications such as LED drivers is limited in achieving high efficiency because it is difficult to be designed optimally. To overcome this limitation, an integrated asymmetrical half-bridge zeta converter is proposed for high efficiency in the overall output voltage range. The proposed converter can be simply implemented by replacing a snubber diode with a switch. The proposed converter operates similar to the asymmetrical half-bridge converter by turning off the switch in the low-output-voltage region, which enables it to have a small dc-offset current in the transformer. In the high-output-voltage region, the proposed converter operates similar to the half-bridge zeta converter by turning on the switch, which has small transformer core loss. Therefore, the proposed converter can achieve high efficiency over the entire output voltage range compared with the conventional converters. The validity of the proposed converter is confirmed by experimental results from a prototype with 400-V input and 90–180-W/3-A output.