A driving scheme to reduce AC LED flicker

摘要

Light flicker is a common but unwelcome phenomenon in conventional lighting applications. In solid-state lighting, driving or dimming methods also give rise to light flicker. AC LED products in today's marketplace suffer from flicker, which stems from the arrangement of the micro-LEDs and the driving method. Research has shown that light flicker can be a health hazard to humans. Several solutions have been proposed to reduce light flicker in solid-state lighting applications; however, most have drawbacks in terms of power and other performance. This paper proposes a circuit design to reduce light flicker from AC LEDs while maintaining a normal power factor and high power efficiency. The circuit is composed of one resistive branch and one capacitive branch, and each branch drives a load which is made up of high-voltage LEDs. Percent flicker, power factor, and power efficiency were selected as three metrics, and their benchmarks were set to evaluate the performance of this circuit. Phase shift between the two branches was selected as a factor that could determine the circuit performance. The variations of percent flicker, power factor, and power efficiency as a function of phase shift were identified by theoretical analysis and were verified by experiments. The experimental results show that an optimal solution can be achieved for this circuit design at proper phase shift, where the benchmarks of the three metrics are reached.