Digital control of a low-frequency square-wave electronic ballast with resonant ignition

This paper proposes a two-stage low-frequency square-wave (LFSW) electronic ballast with digital control. The first stage of the ballast is a power factor correction (PFC) stage, and the second is a full-bridge (FB) converter used for both lamp ignition and LFSW drive. As a novelty for LFSW ballasts, ignition is achieved without an additional igniter circuit by operating the FB during start-up as a high-frequency resonant inverter. After ignition, the converter operates as an LFSW inverter to avoid exciting acoustic resonances by controlling the FB as a buck converter and regulating alternately positive or negative current to the lamp. Lamp power is regulated by adjusting the average current supplied by the PFC stage. Another contribution of this paper is to utilize digital control as a simple solution to achieve multimode control, including resonant lamp ignition, LFSW transitions, and lamp current and power regulation.