Design of a TRIAC Dimmable LED Driver Chip with a Wide Tuning Range and Two-Stage Uniform Dimming

A TRIAC dimmable LED driver with a wide tuning range and a two-stage uniform dimming scheme is proposed in this paper. To solve the restricted dimming range problem caused by the limited conduction ratio of TRIAC dimmers, a conduction ratio compensation technique is introduced, which can increase the output current up to the rated output current when the TRIAC dimmer turns to the maximum conduction ratio. For further optimization, a two-stage uniform dimming diagram with a rapid dimming curve and a slow dimming curve is designed to make the LED driver regulated visually uniform in the whole adjustable range of the TRIAC dimmer. The proposed control chip is fabricated in a TSMC $0.35{\mu}m$ 5V/650V CMOS/LDMOS process, and verified on a 21V/500mA circuit prototype. The test results show that, in the 90V/60Hz~132V/60Hz ac input range, the voltage linear regulation is 2.6%, the power factor is 99.5% and the efficiency is 83%. Moreover, in the dimming mode, the dimming rate is less than 1% when the maximum dimming current is 516mA and the minimum dimming current is only about 5mA.