Condition monitoring (CM) of power semiconductor devices enhances converter reliability and customer service. Many studies have investigated the semiconductor devices failure modes, the sensor technologies, and the signal processing techniques to optimize the CM. Furthermore, the improvement of power devices’ CM thanks to the use of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence technologies is rising in smart grids, transportation electrification, and so on. These technologies will be widespread in the future, where more and more smart techniques and smart sensors will enable a better estimation of the state of the health (SOH) of the devices. Considering the increasing use of power converters, CM is essential as the analysis of the data obtained from multiple sensors enables the prediction of the SOH, which, in turn, enables to properly schedule the maintenance, i.e., accounting for the trade-off between the maintenance cost and the cost and issues due to the device failure. From this perspective, this review paper summarizes past developments and recent advances of the various methods with the aim of describing the current state-of-the-art in CM research.

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.

Energy-saving lamps are equipped with converters enabling high energy efficiency at the cost of injecting very distorted currents on the mains. The problem is more complex in the emerging smart-lighting scenario where these lamps are also used to perform additional tasks. Harmonics mitigation at the lamp level is expensive; consequently, an optimal lighting system design aiming at reducing both costs and current distortion of the whole lighting system is necessary. A tool able to emulate the current drawn from the lamps is necessary for optimal design. Such a tool has also to consider the fluctuations of the voltage on the mains that usually occur throughout the day. In this perspective, a parametric PSpice circuit is proposed and the netlist is reported in this work. Moreover, the simple procedure to be adopted for computing the parameters is also described. The validation has confirmed the ability of the proposed circuit in emulating the current drawn from various CFLs and LED lamps under different supplying voltage.

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.