• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.640-650
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• 2018

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.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.715-722
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• 2012

New discrete time domain models for the peak current controlled (PCC) power LED drivers in continuous conduction mode include for the first time the effects of the time delay in the pulse-width-modulator. Realistic amounts of time delay are found to have significant effects on the average output LED current and on the critical inductor value at the boundary between the two conduction modes. Especially, the time delay can provide an accurate LED current for the PCC buck converter with a wide input voltage. The models can also predict the critical inductor value at the mode boundary as functions of the input voltage and the time delay. The overshoot of the peak inductor current due to the time delay results in the increase of the average output current and the reduction of the critical inductor value at the mode boundary in all converters. Experimental results are presented for the PCC buck LED driver with constant-frequency controller.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.133-138
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• 2014

This paper proposes a low power-loss averaging current mode control using a resistor and bypass switch. Generally, current sensing method using a resistor has a disadvantage of power loss which degrades the efficiency of the entire systems. On the other hand, proposed measurement technique operating with bypass-switch connected in parallel with sensing resistor can reduce power loss significantly the current sensor. An analog-circuited bypass driver is implemented and used along with an average-circuit mode controller. The bypass switch bypasses the sensing current with a small amount of power loss. In this paper, a 50[W] prototype average current mode boost converter has been implemented for the experimental verification.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.184-193
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• 2015

This paper proposes a cost-efficient and automatic method for large data acquisition from a test chip without expensive equipment to characterize random process variation in an integrated circuit. Our method requires only a test chip, a personal computer, a cheap digital-to-analog converter, a controller and multimeters, and thus large volume measurement can be performed on an office desk at low cost. To demonstrate the proposed method, we designed a test chip with a current model logic driver and an array of 128 current mirrors that mimic the random process variation of the driver's tail current mirror. Using our method, we characterized the random process variation of the driver's voltage due to the random process variation on the driver's tail current mirror from large volume measurement data. The statistical characteristics of the driver's output voltage calculated from the measured data are compared with Monte Carlo simulation. The difference between the measured and the simulated averages and standard deviations are less than 20% showing that we can easily characterize the random process variation at low cost by using our cost-efficient automatic large data acquisition method.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.632-640
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• 2014

For low-power high-frequency LED driver applications in small form factor mobile products, a high-efficiency boundary conduction mode tapped-inductor boost converter is proposed. In the proposed converter, the switch and the diode achieve soft-switching, the diode reverse-recovery is alleviated, and the switching frequency is very insensitive to output voltage variations. The circuit is quantitatively characterized, and the design guidelines are presented. Experimental results from an LED backlight driver prototype for a 14 inch notebook computer are also presented.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.242-248
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• 2012

Self oscillating current fed push pull resonant inverters can be controlled without using special drivers. Dc current flows through the choke coil and the power switches, although the driving signals of the power switches are sinusoidal. When the base current is near zero, the transistors cannot be operated in switching mode. Hence higher switching power losses and instantaneous peak power during off transitions are observed. In this study, an alternative design has been proposed to overcome this problem. A prototype circuit has been built which provides dc bias current to the base of the transistors. Experimental results are compared with theoretical calculations to demonstrate the validity of the design. The proposed design decreases the peak and average power losses by about 8 times, when compared to conventional designs.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.104-110
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• 2011

High-brightness LED control is required for stable operation, thus the driver and control system must be designed to deliver a constant current to optimize reliability and ensure consistent luminous flux. In this paper, the sliding mode current controller is designed to adjust the illumination density of power LEDs. The controller design model of power LEDs, including its driving circuit, is proposed to realize the dimming control of power LEDs. A buck converter is introduced to drive the power LEDs and reduce the input voltage to a lower level. The sliding mode software controller is implemented to adjust the dimming of power LEDs. The proposed strategy for driving power LEDs is investigated and comparatively studied by experiments.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.45 no.8
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• pp.1-10
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• 2008

In this paper, we describe a design of a 128bit MRAM based on a new switching architecture which is Local Field Switching(LFS). LFS uses a local magnetic field generated by the current flowing through an MTJ. This mode reduces the writing current since small current can induce large magnetic field because of close distance between MTJ and the current. It also improves the cell selectivity over using conventional MTJ architecture because it doesn't need a digit line for writing. The MRAM has 1-Transistor 1-Magnetic Tunnel Junction (IT-1MTJ) memory cell structure and uses a bidirectional write driver, a mid-point reference cell block and a current mode sense amplifier. CMOS emulation cell is adopted as an LFS-MTJ cell to verify the operation of the circuit without the MTJ process. The memory circuit is fabricated using a $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS technology with six layers o) metal and tested on custom board.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.01a
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• pp.167-168
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• 2000

We propose a signaling circuit that can reduce power consumption and Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) in a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) controller-to-source driver interface. The proposed signaling circuit consists of a coder/decoder that can minimize temporal bit transitions in a transmission line and a current-mode driver that can convert voltage swing into a very small amount of current. We have simulated the proposed signaling circuit using the HSPICE and the proposed signaling circuit has been designed in a 0.25 ${\mu}m$ CMOS technology.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.886-894
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• 2012

This paper presents a secondary-side, dual-mode feedback LLC resonant controller IC with dynamic PWM dimming for LED backlight units. In order to reduce the cost, master and slave outputs can be generated simultaneously with a single LLC resonant core based on dual-mode feedback topologies. Pulse Frequency Modulation (PFM) and Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) schemes are used for the master stage and slave stage, respectively. In order to guarantee the correct dual feedback operation, Phased-Locked Loop (PLL)-based automatic duty control circuit is proposed in this paper. The chip is fabricated using $0.35{\mu}m$ Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) technology, and the die size is $2.5mm{\times}2.5mm$. The frequency of the gate driver (GDA/GDB) in the clock generator ranges from 50 to 425 kHz. The current consumption of the LLC resonant controller IC is 40 mA for a 100 kHz operation frequency using a 15 V supply. The duty ratio of the slave stage can be controlled from 40% to 60% independent of the frequency of the master stage.