IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 45, NO.

2, APRIL 1998 249

A Cold-Cathode Fluorescent Lamp

Driver Circuit with Synchronous
Primary-Side Dimming Control
Mu-Shen Lin, Wen-Jung Ho, Fu-Yuan Shih, Member, IEEE, Dan Y. Chen, Senior Member, IEEE, and Yan-Pei Wu

Abstract—A novel synchronous primary-side dimming control I. INTRODUCTION

scheme is proposed and tested for a cold-cathode fluorescent lamp
(CCFL) driver circuit for liquid crystal display (LCD) back-
light illumination display application. This new control scheme
features high efficiency, even-dimming sensitive adjustment, even-
T RANSMISSIVE liquid crystal displays (LCD’s) are
widely used in battery-powered notebook computers
and portable instruments. In such applications, cold-cathode
brightness control for a two-lamp system, less lamp flickering fluorescent lamps (CCFL’s) are commonly used to provide
problems, stable feedback control, and simplicity. An analysis of
the circuit is given, from which a design example is presented.
backlight illumination for the transmissive LCD’s. For the
proper operation of a CCFL, a driver circuit needs to provide
Index Terms— Cold-cathode fluorescent lamp, current-fed a high starting voltage of about 1400 V rms to ionize the
push–pull parallel-resonant inverter, dimming control, flickering,
liquid crystal display, liquid crystal display backlight driver, gas-discharge lamp; the lamp voltage collapses to 280–480 V
synchronous. rms after the lamp starts. The operation frequency is normally
recommended between 25–85 kHz, and a sinusoidal lamp
voltage waveform is preferable. Dimming control capability
NOMENCLATURE is normally a very desirable feature for such applications.
Current in the inductor in Fig. 3. Presently, a current-fed push–pull parallel-resonant inverter
Average value of is the most popular circuit used to drive the CCFL [1], [2] and
Input voltage to the driver circuit. the dimming control capability is accomplished by adding a
Voltage at point in the circuit of Fig. 3. Buck converter [3]–[6]. Fig. 1 shows this conventional circuit.
Voltage at point in the circuit of Fig. 3. The lamp brightness is roughly proportional to the lamp cur-
Average value of . rent [4]–[6], so the lamp current flowing through the sensing
Voltage of the capacitor in Fig. 3. resistor is used as a feedback signal. However, there are
Magnetizing inductance of half of the primary annoying problems associated with this circuit. Firstly, in
of transformer . most applications, there are long-distance cables connecting
Total primary magnetizing inductance of trans- the driver circuits to the CCFL’s. For EMI suppression, the
former . LCD’s are always covered with conductive coatings which are
Duty cycle of Buck switching. connected to the system grounds, so that there are significant
Resistance of the CCFL at a specific bright- parasitic capacitances existing between the cables and the
ness. system grounds, as shown in Fig. 2. The primary ground and
Reflected resistance in primary-side from . secondary ground are connected together in the circuit of
Lamp voltage of the CCFL. Fig. 1. The primary grounds are always the system grounds,
RMS value of lamp. because the power sources refer to the system grounds, so the
Lamp current of the CCFL. parasitic capacitances cause very significant leakage currents,
RMS value of . normally comparable to the lamp currents, to flow to the
Lamp current of the CCFL in a specific bright- system grounds. Therefore, the current flowing through the
ness. sensing resistor cannot accurately represent the lamp
Voltage required for CCFL to ionize. current. This results in poor efficiency and uneven sensitive
Transformer auxiliary winding (see Fig. 3). dimming control [5]. Secondly, the switching frequency of
Manuscript received April 22, 1996; revised May 12, 1997.
the pulsewidth-modulated (PWM) controller is independently
M.-S. Lin, W.-J. Ho, and Y.-P. Wu are with the Department of Electrical set and is not synchronous with the resonant frequency of the
Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 106 Taiwan, R.O.C. parallel-resonant inverter, which produces a beat frequency in
F.-Y. Shih was with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National
Taiwan University, Taipei, 106 Taiwan, R.O.C. He is now with Delta Elec- the lamp voltage waveform. This could lead to a flickering
tronics, Inc., Chungli Industrial Zone Taoyuon Shien, Taiwan, R.O.C. problem and is not good for EMI suppression.
D. Y. Chen is with the Virginia Power Electronics Center, Bradley De- In this paper, a “synchronous primary-side dimming con-
partment of Electrical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University, Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA (e-mail: Chen@vt.edu). trol” scheme is proposed to cure the problems mentioned
Publisher Item Identifier S 0278-0046(98)00406-7. above. In this scheme, the dimming control is accomplished
0278–0046/98$10.00  1998 IEEE
250 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 45, NO. 2, APRIL 1998

Fig. 1. A conventional CCFL driver circuit.

Fig. 3. Proposed synchronous primary-side dimming control driver circuit
for CCFL’s.

this paper because of extreme cost and size considerations. The

details of the circuit operation are described in the following
section.

A. Power Circuit Operation

Referring to Fig. 3, the circuit starts operation as the current
flows through and and is turned on. Then, the
capacitor and the primary magnetizing inductance of the
transformer begin to resonate. The polarity of the auxiliary
winding keeps the switch “ON” and the switch
“OFF.” The voltage at point is equal to and
Fig. 2. Parasitic capacitances and leakage current paths in the circuit of is negative during this half cycle. When the winding voltage of
Fig. 1. transformer is reversed due to resonance, is turned on
and is turned off. The voltage at point is equal to
and is positive during this half cycle. As the resonance
by feeding back a signal on the primary side of the circuit, continues, and switch alternatively. It can be seen that
so the secondary ground is separated from the primary system the voltage at point is equal to and has a frequency
ground, which cuts off the leakage currents. This proposed double the resonant frequency of the inverter circuit. Fig. 4
topology not only simplifies the circuit, but also enables the shows some waveforms measured from the circuit of Fig. 3.
brightness control to be accomplished with even sensitivity, Fig. 4(a) shows the waveforms for and Notice that
high efficiency, less flickering problem, stabler closed loop, is mostly dc with small ripple, and the ripple frequency ( i.e.,
and even brightness in a two-lamp system. In this paper, a the PWM frequency ) is twice the lamp current frequency (i.e.,
description of the circuit operation will be given in Section II. the resonant frequency). This is a desirable feature because the
Based on the analysis of the circuit, design considerations and resonant frequency and the PWM frequency are synchronous
design equations for the circuit will be given in Section III. with each other, which, therefore, avoids a possible flickering
In Section IV, a practical design example will be given and problem. Fig. 4(b) shows the two currents flowing through
experimental verification of the design example will also be the primary of the transformer Fig. 4(c) shows the
given. Because of the number of symbols used, the Nomen- voltages of two switches. Because the voltage of the capacitor
clature has been provided. is zero when the auxiliary winding voltage is reversing the
polarity, the switches and are turned on with zero
II. DRIVER CIRCUIT WITH SYNCHRONOUS voltage switching.
PRIMARY-SIDE DIMMING CONTROL
Fig. 3 shows the proposed driver circuit with synchronous B. Dimming Control
primary-side dimming control. The power circuit consists of a The lamp brightness is roughly proportional to the lamp
Buck converter and a current-fed push–pull parallel-resonant current. It will be proven later that the lamp current is
inverter. The dimming control is accomplished by sensing the proportional to the average input inductor current which also
current flowing through the sensing resistor on the primary flows through the sensing resistor Therefore, dimming
side and using a comparator to control the duty cycle of Buck control can be achieved by sensing the voltage across the
switching. A series capacitor can be added in the secondary sensing resistor without having to sense the lamp current.
side to improve the circuit efficiency, but this was not done in This way, the leakage currents previously mentioned are cut
LIN et al.: CCFL DRIVER CIRCUIT WITH DIMMING CONTROL 251

(a)

(b)
Fig. 4. Major waveforms measured from the circuit of Fig. 3 (8-V input). (a) ilamp and i L: (b) i ell1 and i ell2 .

off and the problems are avoided. From the circuit of Fig. 3, Several assumptions, as follows, are made in the derivation:
dimming control can be finally achieved by changing the value 1) then can be regarded as a dc current
of in the PWM comparator. ; 2) (coefficient of coupling) ;
1) Relationship Between and : The whole and 3) the CCFL has a constant resistive load (the CCFL
idea of using primary-side control for dimming is based on the can be regarded as a constant resistor at a specific brightness).
fact that the feedback signal is proportional to Then, ignoring losses, the input power is equal to lamp power:
This fact will be proved and the relationship between and
will be derived herein. (1)
252
Fig. 4. (Continued.) Major waveforms measured from the circuit of Fig. 3 (8-V input). (c)
Since [1]
(2)
it follows that
(3)
Since it can be seen that is
proportional to as stated in the first sentence of this
section.
2) Dimming Control Circuit Referring again to Fig. 3, the
voltage of the noninvertering terminal of the comparator con-
sists of two components. One component is a dc signal derived
from the dc voltage across , and the other component
is an ac signal derived from the voltage at point . Fig. 5
shows such waveforms. In the design, the dc component is
normally made much larger than the ac component, the duty
cycle of Buck switching is, therefore, determined by the
and the dc component, and the lamp current can be linearly
controlled by the However, the PWM frequency is
synchronous with the resonant frequency and is determined by
the ac component frequency that is double that of the resonant
frequency. Therefore, the synchronous design eliminates a
reason for the lamp flickering problem encountered in a
conventional driver circuit.
It is important to point out that, from (3), is
proportional to , which is proportional to duty cycle of
switch This implies that dimming can be accomplished by
adjusting with constant sensitivity, which is a desirable
feature. In fact, this proposed dimming control is a peak
current mode control, so a ramp compensation is necessary
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 45, NO. 2, APRIL 1998
(c)
VCE;Q1 and VCE;Q2 .
Fig. 5. Input and output waveforms of the comparator in Fig. 3. (a) When
Q Q Q Q
2 is ON and 1 is OFF. (b) When 1 is ON and 2 is OFF.
if the duty cycle is over 50%. From the experimental results
in Tables I and II, it can be seen that the duty cycle is
always under 50% Therefore, in such
applications, the subharmonic oscillation can be avoided.
C. Advantages of Primary-Side Dimming Control
Besides the advantages of high efficiency, avoiding an un-
even lamp brightness problem in a two-lamp system, dimming
control with even adjustment sensitivity, and single-frequency
waveform in lamp drive, the primary-side dimming control
scheme possesses three other advantages. Firstly, the feedback
loop is more stable than the conventional one in Fig. 1. This
is because the duty cycle of Buck switching is controlled by
directly feeding back the voltage across without having
to use any rectifiers or filters (because the current is
essentially a dc current). For the conventional driver circuit,
the situation is different. The quasi-sinusoidal lamp current has
to be rectified and filtered before it is fed back to control the
duty cycle of Buck switching. The rectifier and filter needed
LIN et al.: CCFL DRIVER CIRCUIT WITH DIMMING CONTROL 253

TABLE I
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FOR 8-V INPUT

(a)

TABLE II
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FOR 15-V INPUT

(b)
Fig. 6. Equivalent circuit of the parallel-resonant inverter.

condition for a quasi-sinusoidal output is

(8)

If then the output lamp voltage

and lamp current waveforms are much closer to pure sinusoidal
waveforms.
to provide a dc feedback signal because of the two extra
poles, and which could result in instability. E. Resonant Frequency
Secondly, the primary-side dimming control driver needs no
photocoupler isolation in the feedback path, which makes the The resonant frequency of the parallel-resonant inverter is
circuit simple. Thirdly, employing a comparator to replace the shown by
PWM controller not only increases the efficiency, but also
cuts part of the cost. (9)

D. Conditions for Quasi-Sinusoidal Operation where (because is normally much larger

When the switch is ON and the switch is OFF, and than 1).
the equivalent circuit of the parallel-resonant inverter is shown
in Fig. 6(a). The sensing resistor can be neglected because III. DESIGN EQUATIONS AND DESIGN PROCEDURES FOR
of its small value. The equations describing the circuit are as THE SYNCHRONOUS PRIMARY-SIDE DRIVER CIRCUIT
follows:
Step 1: Determine the ratio. Before the CCFL
starts, the output voltage (rms) equals The
(4) ratio should be adjusted to be as large as necessary to
start the CCFL. However, a larger ratio will result
(5) in a larger current [from (3)], which increases
the conductive losses. Therefore, the ratio should be
(6) selected just high enough to provide the maximal lamp startup
(7) voltage. That is,

During the other half cycle, when the switch is ON and (10)
the switch is OFF, the equivalent circuit of the parallel-
resonant inverter is shown in Fig. 6(b), and the describing Step 2: Determine the ratings of the switches and
equations are similar to (4)–(7). Once the ratio is fixed, the transistor voltage rating
A sinusoidal voltage waveform is good for the life cycle of can be given by
the CCFL. The solutions to (4)–(7) will be quasi-sinusoidal
if the characteristic roots of (4) are complex conjugate. The (11)
254 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 45, NO. 2, APRIL 1998

The input inductor current flows through the switches , and values should satisfy the following inequal-
and alternatively, so the transistor current rating should be ities:
equal to :
(20)
(12) (21)
Step 3: Determine the inductance value the capacitance The larger the value is, the larger the dc component
value and the total primary magnetizing inductance value (of is, but the power loss of will increase. Thus, the
of the transformer. From (8) and (9), solve for and for choice of is a tradeoff between noise immunity and power
a quasi-sinusoidal operation: dissipation.

(13) IV. DESIGN EXAMPLE AND EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION

A design example is presented in this section to illustrate
(14)
the use of the design equations described in Section III. The
results from this design example are verified experimentally.
As one can see from these two equations, there is more than
one set of and design for given values of and A. Design Example
In general, the larger the is (the smaller the is), the
more sinusoidal the waveforms are, and the better the lamp 1) Design Specifications: The no-load output voltage is
life cycle is, but the copper losses of the primary windings 1400 V rms (min), the dimming range of the lamp current
of the transformer are larger. The reflected inductor is is 0.5–2.5 mA rms, the input voltage is 8 15 V (eight-cell
normally chosen to be large enough (10 times to maintain Ni-Cd battery pack), and the operating frequency is 50 kHz.
a small ripple current in , i.e, 2) Design Steps: Follow the design steps outlined in
Section III.
(15) Step 1: Determine the ratio.
From (10), (1400/8) 79.
Step 4: Determine the value and the auxiliary winding Take for design margin.
When the switch or is turned ON, the current Step 2: Determine the ratings of the switches and
is about ( These two transistors have to be From (11), the voltage ratings of the switches and
operated in saturation condition for high efficiency. To ensure are
saturation, (16) must be satisfied, thus
V
(16)
Since the maximal lamp current is 2.5 mA in the design,
the current ratings of the switches and can be obtained
The voltage difference between the two bases of the from (3) and (12):
switches and must be at least 0.5 V to make sure
that only one of them is ON. By this requirement, the mA A
has to be determined by (17) to make sure only one switch
is turned on over 90% of the cycle (the voltage of auxiliary Step 3: Determine the inductance value the capaci-
winding is a sinusoidal waveform): tance value and the total primary magnetizing inductance
value of the transformer.
(17) Practical measurements from Sharp LM64P81 LCD display
the impedance of CCFL; is about 188 K at 2.5 mA rms
lamp current. It was found that the smaller the lamp current
Step 5: Determine the and values. The
is, the higher the is. To make the entire dimming range
dc component of the noninvertering terminal of the PWM
of the lamp current (0.5–2.5 mA rms) have a good sinusoidal
comparator (in Fig. 3) is
waveform, using K in (13):

F
(18) k K

Select F (standard value), and use (14):

and the ac voltage component is
H
(19)
Take H The larger the inductance is, the smaller
From (18) and (19) and the fact that the dc component the ripple current in is, so H is selected in the
should be designed much larger than the ac component, the design.
LIN et al.: CCFL DRIVER CIRCUIT WITH DIMMING CONTROL 255

Step 4: Determine the value and the auxiliary wind- [4] J. A. Donahue and M. M. Jovanovic, “The LCC inverter as a cold
ing cathode fluorescent lamp driver,” in Proc. Applied Power Electronics
Conf., 1994, pp. 427–433.
Choose transistor type 2SD1760 (ROHM) for and [5] J. Williams, “Designing supplies for powering LCD backlight,” EDN
is equal to 82. Mag., pp. 125–136, Oct. 29, 1992.
[6] J. Williams, “Techniques illuminate backlite LCD’s with high effi-
From (16), K ciency,” EDN Mag., pp. 89–94, Jan. 6, 1994.
is selected). [7] U. Mader and P. Horn, “A dynamic model for the electrical characteris-
From (17), select and ; then, tics of fluorescent lamps,” Knobel AG Lighting Components, Ennenda,
Switzerland.
is selected).
Step 5: Determine the values.
From (20) and (21), choose K, K,
and K. According to the description in Step 5 in Mu-Shen Lin received the B.S. degree in elec-
Section III, choose tronic engineering in 1986 from National Chiao
Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C., and the
The results of the design are summarized as follows: M.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1988 from
H, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.,
where he is currently working toward the Ph.D.
H, degree.
F, k He was engaged in the development of an elec-
, k tronic power system used in portable personal com-
puters, involving the use of an ac/dc adapter, dc/dc
k , k . converter, and dc/ac inverter.

B. Experimental Verification
The design example shown above was implemented and the
experimental results are displayed in Tables I and II. The data
experimentally confirms that the is approximately
proportional to
V. CONCLUSIONS
A novel synchronous primary-side dimming control driver
circuit for the CCFL has been presented. It features a dimming
control with high efficiency, even adjustment sensitivity, even
brightness in a two-lamp system, a more stable closed loop,
less lamp flickering problem, and a simple circuit.
Based on the analysis of the circuit, a design procedure
for the driver circuit was presented. A numerical example
was given to illustrate the design procedure. An experimental
circuit was built based on the outcome of the design procedure.
The measured results agree well with the analytical results.
The power consumption of the comparator is 12 mW (as
compared to 150 mW for a PWM control integrated circuit).
This improves the efficiency by about 5% for a 2.5-W CCFL
driver circuit.
REFERENCES
[1] G. Bruning, “A comparative introduction of a new high voltage resonant
oscillator,” in Proc. Applied Power Electronics Conf. Exposition, 1986,
pp. 76–82.
[2] M. Gulko and S. Ben-Yaakov, “Current-sourcing push-pull parallel-
resonance inverter (CS-PPRI) theory and application as a fluorescent
lamp driver,” in Proc. Applied Power Electronics Conf., 1993, pp.
411–417.
[3] J. Williams, “Fluorescent lamp power supply and control unit,” U.S.
Patent 5 408 162, Apr. 18, 1995.
Wen-Jung Ho received the B.S. degree from Na-
tional Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan,
R.O.C., and the M.S. degree from Tatung Institute
of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1984 and
1989, respectively. He is currently working toward
the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical
Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei,
Taiwan, R.O.C.
His primary research interests are power elec-
tronic converter circuits and advanced control tech-
niques in uninterruptible power systems (UPS’s).
Fu-Yuan Shih (S’91–M’96) was born in Taipei,
Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1968. He received the B.S.
degree from Tamkang University, Tamsui, Taiwan,
R.O.C., and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electri-
cal engineering from National Taiwan University,
Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1990, 1992, and 1995,
respectively.
In 1996, he joined the faculty of the Army Com-
munication and Electronics School (ACES), Taiwan,
R.O.C. He is currently with Delta Electronics, Inc.,
Chungli Industrial Zone Taoyuon Shien, Taiwan,
R.O.C. His research interests include modeling and simulation of switching
converters, LCD inverters, paralleled power supplies, and EMI filter design.
Dan Y. Chen (S’72–M’75–SM’83), for a photograph and biography, see this
issue, p. 248.
Yan-Pei Wu, for a photograph and biography, see this issue, p. 248.