Nowadays, LED lamps have become a widespread solution in different lighting systems due to their high brightness, efficiency, long lifespan, high reliability and environmental friendliness. The choice of a proper LED driver circuit plays an important role, especially in terms of power quality. In fact, the driver controls its own input current in addition to the LED output current, thus it must guarantee a high power factor. Among the various LED drivers available on the market, the quasi-resonant (QR) flyback topology shows interesting benefits. This paper aims at investigating and analyzing the different issues related to the input current distortion in a QR flyback LED driver. Several effects, such as the distortion caused by the ringing current, crossover distortion due to transformer leakage inductance and crossover distortion due to the input storage capacitor have been experimentally reported. These effects, not previously studied for a high power factor (Hi-PF) QR flyback, have been analyzed in depth. Finally, some practical design guidelines for a Hi-PF QR flyback driver for LED applications are provided.

On 1 January 2001, the IEC 61000-3-2 regulation became effective. Since then, mitigating current harmonics has been essential to ensure that electronic equipment connected to single-phase power distribution lines conforms to electromagnetic compatibility directives. Today, high-quality rectification, commonly known as power factor correction (PFC), is a well-established technique widely adopted by the industry for powering various devices from the ac line. The topic has been studied by academia and industry since the mid-1980s; thus, an enormous amount of research has been published and countless solutions have been proposed since then. However, only a few of those solutions have encountered wide industrial usage. So, it is not the authors’ intention to provide a comprehensive review, but to take stock of the most used PFC techniques from an industry perspective. This paper will review the power factor theory with non-sinusoidal currents, the practical and regulatory aspects of using PFC, and the most common industry solutions for power factor correction in equipment operated from the single-phase, public, low-voltage supply system, with a special focus on boost PFC pre-regulators, their control methods, design procedures, and issues.

The LLC resonant converter is perhaps today’s most popular resonant conversion topology. Yet, though in existence for many years, only relatively recently has it gained the popularity it certainly deserves. Since its first appearance in the literature in 1988, it has been confined for a long time to niche applications: high-voltage power supplies or high-end audio systems, to name a few. Its significant industrial usage started in the mid-2000s with the boom of flat screen TVs, whose power supply requirements found in the LLC resonant converter their best answer, and was fueled by the introduction of new regulations, both voluntary and mandatory, concerning an efficient use of energy. This combination of events pushed power designers to find more and more efficient ac-dc conversion systems. Since then, several other mass-produced electronic devices, such as All-In-One and small form factor PCs, high-power ac-dc adapters and LED drivers, have made a massive usage of this topology, especially in its half-bridge version. Higher power systems, such as server and telecom power supplies and, more recently, charging stations for electric vehicles, have mainly adopted the full-bridge version. Over these last three decades, there has been a lot of progress on both theoretical and practical aspects related to the LLC resonant converter. Lots of papers and application notes deal with it, and many IC manufacturers have dedicated driver ICs in their portfolio. Despite that, its design is still considered a challenging task in Power Conversion. Thus, a guided tour through its intricacies may be beneficial to both the neophyte and the experienced engineer. The monograph will cover the basics (operating modes, soft switching mechanism, first-harmonic approximation, etc.), as well as some advanced topics (design optimization, control methods, synchronous rectification, interleaving, etc.) using a hands-on, design-oriented approach.

This work focuses on an isolated offline driver to power LED lamps, realized with a high-power-factor quasi-resonant (Hi-PF QR) flyback converter with peak current mode control and employing constant-current primary-sensing regulation (CC-PSR). The converter is controlled with a recently introduced control technique that enables this kind of converter to ideally draw a sinusoidal current from the input source and, at the same time, to accurately regulate the dc output current using only quantities available on the primary side. The resulting absence of an optocoupler or other means crossing the isolation barrier to close a feedback loop not only reduces size and cost of the driver but also brings greater safety and reliability. The analysis addresses those factors inherent in the control method that affect the shape of the input current that have not been covered in the existing literature. The aim is to set up some design guidelines to minimize the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) of the input current. The experimental work shows that using this technique enables the design of an LED driver for wide range mains (90 to 264 Vac) that achieves output current regulation better than ±2%, power factor close to unity and THD of the input current <10% over the input voltage range and over a 2:1 range of the output voltage.

The power supply of many applications running off the power line is made up of an isolated dc-dc converter powered by a front-end power factor corrector (PFC) stage. The PFC stage ensures compliance with the electromagnetic compatibility regulations but does not usually provide safety isolation since it is typically implemented with a boost converter. Lately, the increase in multi-output power supplies, especially in lighting and USB Power Delivery applications, has raised the need for an isolated PFC at power levels where currently there is not an industry standard solution. This isolated PFC is intended to power one or more non-isolated post-regulators to enable a substantial simplification of the overall architecture and a cost reduction. The usage of an LLC resonant converter as an isolated PFC has been considered and demonstrated only quite recently, raising the industry’s attention due to the favorable converter’s characteristics that have led to its success as a dc-dc converter. This paper provides two significant contributions. Firstly, it provides a quantitative assessment of the difference in the results obtained by designing an LLC-based PFC converter based on the first harmonic approximation analysis or the time-domain analysis by applying them to the design of the same converter. Secondly, it demonstrates that designing an LLC-based PFC converter to work also in the above-resonance region optimizes its performance by reducing the (magnetizing) reactive current in the resonant tank and, therefore, the rms currents on both the input and the output side and the related power loss.

In a high-power factor quasi-resonant Flyback, an ideal zero current detection (ZCD) circuit and control circuitry enable the power switch turn-on in the exact instant a zero ringing current is reached after demagnetization. A nonzero current at the turn-on instant affects the input current shape and; consequently, affects its Total Harmonic Distortion (THD). This paper firstly deeply analyzes the effect on the distortion due to a nonideal ZCD circuit. After, some typical implementations of the ZCD circuit and their effect on the THD are analyzed, identifying their pros and cons. Finally, some experimental results are obtained to validate the analytical investigation.