A New Circuit Design of AC/DC Converter for T8 LED Tube

This study is about an improved high-quality light-emitting diode (LED) converter for a T8 LED tube. The converter is separated into the AC driving circuit and DC driving circuit. Also, the LED tube was applied with an output ripple eliminator for the optical performance. The AC driving circuit and DC driving circuit are assembled at the end of the LED tube in a G13 base and a G13 base dummy, respectively, and the output ripple eliminator is located on an LED PCB. The proposed LED converter is founded on a SSBB (single-stage buck-boost) converter topology and was designed for 10 W operation for a 600 mm T8 LED tube. The light waveform of the LED tube was measured by a photosensor. The waveform had almost no ripple and was the same as a straight line. The average calculated percent flicker of the proposed LED converter was an average of 1.9% at 100 and 240 VAC, 50 and 60 Hz. The proposed converter has lower power efficiency than a conventional converter by 2.7% at 100–240 VAC, but it still has high power efficiency (>87%). The measurement results represent that the LED output current regulation is below 0.92% at 100–240 VAC and the converter obtains the power factor more than 0.84 and the total harmonic distortion is less than 14.3%. All of the current harmonics reach the IEC 61000-3-2 Class D standards for high-quality LED converters.