Novel Crest Factor Improvement of Electronic Ballast-Fed Fluorescent Lamp Current Using Pulse Frequency Modulation

In case that electronic ballast employing a valley-fill passive power factor correction (PFC) circuit is used for feeding fluorescent lamps, a new method to reduce crest factor of the lamp current is studied in this paper. In order to reduce crest factor to lower value, a pulse frequency modulation technique based on the waveform of the dc-link voltage which is predetermined by the passive PFC circuit, is taken into the switching control action of the electronic ballast. An equation-based analysis between the crest factor of lamp current and the effect of varying the inverter switching frequency is comprehensively performed.