Light-emitting diode driver for lighting application using field programmable gate array

Abstract

Light-emitting diode (LED) is the most popular lighting source since the early 21st century. Its advantages include high efficiency, long lifetime and environmental friendliness makes it attractive in lighting application. This leads to the development of high energy efficient LED drivers. Despite the advantages, driving LEDs at high output ripple and without current regulation can degrade LEDs’ performance. Furthermore, energy consumption of the controller on LED driver contributes to energy loss. Moreover, prototyping a full custom application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) is time consuming and not reprogrammable. The main objective of this research is to design an LED driver for lighting application using field programmable gate array (FPGA), and to analyse the performance. Simulation model was developed and simulated in LTSpice IV software. The LED driver controller was developed using Altera DE0-Nano FPGA Board with Quartus II software using Verilog hardware description language. The power stage schematic and printed circuit board layout were designed using Cadsoft EAGLE software. The LED driver performance was assessed in term of energy efficiency and output ripple. In energy efficiency experiment, rheostat was used as load. The result shows that the simulation model and the hardware prototype achieved energy efficiency of 93.36% and 93.19% respectively. In output ripple experiment, the result shows that the maximum output ripple of the simulation model is 0.046% while the hardware prototype is 0.06%. High-brightness white LEDs was also used as load in assessing the LED driver energy efficiency. The result shows that the hardware prototype achieved energy efficiency of 93.18% and has a maximum output ripple of 0.054% when high-brightness white LEDs are used as load.