IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: EXPRESS BRIEFS, VOL. 70, NO.

3, MARCH 2023 1059

Design and Implementation of the

Linear LED Driver
Hsiao-Hsing Chou

Abstract—This brief presents a new LED control scheme to

maintain a constant LED power. In LED control schemes, the
conventional approach is to maintain a constant LED current.
However, this traditional approach will bring high power at high
input voltage and then generate high heat. The higher heat will
shorten the life time of the product and reduce the reliability. The
proposed scheme can solve this problem. The LED driver with the
proposed scheme has been successfully fabricated by Macronix Fig. 1. Switch mode power converter.
and the feasibility of the method has been verified. From the
experimental results, the higher the input voltage, the lower the
LED current. This constant power method can effectively avoid
overheating at high input voltage. The control scheme, the theo-
retical analysis and the circuit implementation are presented in
this brief.
Index Terms—Switch mode power supply (SMPS), AC-DC
LED linear driver, constant LED current, constant LED power,
primary side control flyback converter, LED strings forward Fig. 2. Linear LED driver.
voltage (VFS).

I. I NTRODUCTION
N RECENT years, the Light-Emitting Diode (LED) has
I gradually replaced the traditional lamps (such as compact
fluorescent lamps, incandescent lamps) due to its advan-
tages of energy saving and long life time [1], [2]. Many
countries began to ban the sale of fluorescent lamps in
order to make LED more common in indoor/outdoor light-
ing of commercial institutions [3], [4], [5]. In addition, LED
have many advantages: such as small size, easy to make
various types of lamps, high efficiency, non-mercury pollu-
tion [6], [7], [8]. Therefore, it is called the “green” energy of Fig. 3. 110VAC input voltage Vin vs. LED strings VFS.
the next generation. Furthermore, the LED consists of solid-
state light-emitting diodes, so it can withstand mechanical
shock [9], [10], [11]. to maintain the uniform light intensity [15], [16], [17], [18].
Traditionally, for AC power supply, there are two ways to Without sacrificing efficiency, the switch regulator can con-
drive high brightness LED strings: (a) using a relatively low trol the LED current precisely by adjusting the duty cycle of
efficiency linear regulator, or (b) using a complex but efficient switches. In the switching regulators, the typical mainstream
switching regulator, also known as switch mode power con- topology is the primary side control flyback converter [19].
verter or switch mode power supply (SMPS) [12], [13], [14] Alternately, for AC power supply, there is another way to
(Fig. 1). Generally, the control scheme of the LED driver is drive LED strings, called the linear LED driver (Fig. 2). In
contrast to Fig. 1, this topology directly uses AC power sup-
Manuscript received 6 September 2022; revised 26 October 2022; accepted
31 October 2022. Date of publication 3 November 2022; date of current ver- ply to drive the LED strings without switch mode converter.
sion 6 March 2023. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Recently, in order to reduce the overall bill of materials (BOM)
Technology, Taiwan, under Grant MOST 110-2222-E-346-001. This brief was cost, the linear-drive topology is more and more popu-
recommended by Associate Editor H. H.-C. Iu.
The author is with the Department of Computer Science and Information lar [20], [21]. The LED strings turned on in Fig. 2 depend
Engineering, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, on the input voltage, i.e., the higher the input voltage, the
Taichung 404, Taiwan (e-mail: [email protected]). more LED strings will be turned on.
Color versions of one or more figures in this article are available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSII.2022.3219226. Fig. 3 shows the relationship between the input voltage Vin
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCSII.2022.3219226 and the LED strings forward voltage (VFS).
1549-7747 
c 2022 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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 1060 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: EXPRESS BRIEFS, VOL. 70, NO. 3, MARCH 2023

For a clear explanation, we assume that the VFS of the

LED1 -LED3 strings is about 40V in Fig. 2. Fig. 3 shows that
the input voltage Vin will cause LED1 -LED3 to light up in
the following process: (a) The input voltage Vin is 0-40V,
no LEDs turned ON during T0-T1 and T6-T7. (b) The input
voltage Vin is 40-80V, the LED1 turned ON during T1-T2 and
T5-T6. (c) The input voltage Vin is 80-120V, the LED1 -LED2
are ON during T2-T3 and T4-T5. (d) The Vin is larger than
120V, all LED turned ON during T3-T4. The controller in
Fig. 2 controls the switches S1 -S3 to turn on the LED.
Although the linear drive solution has the advantage of the
low cost, it has two disadvantages. (a) The efficiency of the
linear drive scheme is low. The efficiency of a linear driver
depends on the number of LED segments. The rule of thumb
is that the more LED segments, the higher the efficiency. For
example, Fig. 2 shows a three LED segments topology. The
efficiency of the LED1 -LED3 topology is higher than the effi-
ciency of the LED1 -LED2 topology. (b) The output power of
the linear drive solution varies depending on the line volt-
age, which is caused by the constant LED current control
mechanism. As a result, the LED power is higher at high line
voltages, accompanied by more severe thermal effects.
In this brief, we will propose a constant power control
scheme to drive LED. The contributions of the brief can be
summarized as: (a) A new method is proposed to keep the LED Fig. 4. Power loss in different LED topologies.
power constant rather than the LED current. (b) The control
mechanism can prevent overheating at the higher line voltages.
(c) From the product point of view, the proposed method can
B. Output Power Variation for Constant LED Current
be applied to the AC LED driver.
In general, most linear driver solutions use a constant LED
current approach to drive the LED. However, this method leads
II. C HARACTERISTICS OF L INEAR D RIVER to variations in output power at different line voltages. For
A. Relationship Between Efficiency and LED Segments example, Fig. 5 shows the VFS and the LED current in 90VAC
To explain the relationship between the efficiency and the and 130VAC , the LED power is calculated as 16W and 24W,
LED segments, we can use 3-segment and 2-segment LEDs respectively.
as examples for illustration (Fig. 4). The LED power is large at the high line voltage. This means
In 3-segment LEDs, Fig. 4(a) shows the power loss on the that the high line voltage will generate more heat. The heat will
driver at the line voltage of 110VAC . The VFS of each LED drop the VFS of the LED and further increase the power loss
string is about 40V. The voltage drop from the Vin to the VFS and heat, leading to thermal runaway. In addition, the higher
will fall into the driver, causing power loss, as represented in LED power means higher lumens. Therefore, with a constant
gray area of Fig. 4(a). By Equation (1), we can calculate the LED current control method, the LED has different brightness
efficiency in Fig. 4(a). at different supply voltages.

Pout
efficiency = (1)
Pin III. C ONSTANT O UTPUT P OWER T ECHNIQUE
in Equation (1), the Pout is the LED power, and the Pin is A. Proposed Control Scheme
the input power. From the calculation results, the efficiency of To effectively control the heat generation, we propose
3-segment LEDs is about 80%. a constant power control scheme to drive the LED (Fig. 6).
At the same line voltage, if we change the VFS of each In Fig. 6, the control scheme is mainly composed of the reg-
LED string to 53V, the topology becomes 2-segment LEDs, ulator array, the channel control logic and the constant power
as shown in Fig. 4 (b). After calculation, the efficiency of mechanism. The regulator array controls the LED current to
Fig. 4(b) is reduced to 73.6%. Therefore, the more LED seg- a desired value. The channel control logic decides which chan-
ments is, the higher efficiency is. Theoretically, the efficiency nels need to be turned off. The constant power mechanism
can reach 90% in a 6-segment LEDs topology. keeps the LED power constant. For the channel control logic,
This subsection can conclude two points: (a) The efficiency only one of the VCH1 -VCH6 signals is in the high state. In
of the linear LED driver depends on the LED segmentations other words, only one of the switches S1 -S6 is ON. The pas-
and the VFS of the LED string. (b) The engineer can design the sive components, RF and C1 , perform a low pass filter, which
appropriate VFS for each LED string to get good efficiency. averages the LED power over a half-line cycle.

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 CHOU: DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LINEAR LED DRIVER 1061

Fig. 7. VLED and ILED relationship.

Fig. 5. VFS of LED under different input voltages.

Fig. 8. LED power of Fig. 7.

we assume that the VD1 -VD6 are equal, as expressed in (3).

The total LED voltage drop is labeled the VLED .
VD1 = V D2 = VD3 = V D4 = V D5 = VD6 = V D (3)
When the VRECT is between VD and 2VD , the VLED is
VD (Fig. 7). The VCH1 is in high state (i.e., the S1 is ON)
and the others VCH2 - VCH6 are in low state (i.e., the S2 -
S6 are OFF). If the R1 and the R follow (4), the I1 can be
expressed by (5).
R1 = 1000 · R (4)
I1 = ILED · 10−3 (5)
Similarly, when the VRECT is between 2VD and 3VD ,
Fig. 6. Proposed LED control scheme. the VLED is 2VD . Only the S2 is ON and the others are
OFF. Comparing with the previous situation, the VLED is twice
that of the previous. The LED power is also twice that of the
B. Operation Principle previous. Fig. 8 shows the LED power over a line cycle, which
The LED current can be expressed as (2) is the product of the VLED and the ILED .
Briefly, whether the LED1 -LED6 is lighted or not depends
VCMP
ILED = (2) on the VRECT . That will affect the VLED and the LED power
R (Fig. 8). From the circuit design point of view, in order to
The voltage VCMP is the output of the error amplifier, reflect/present the LED power variation, we properly scale the
(Fig. 6). In the normal state, the VCMP is a near-constant ILED through the R1 , R1 /2, R1 /3,... etc. (Fig. 6).
value. However, at the different line voltages (such as 90VAC , For example, when the S2 is ON, the I2 is set to twice
110VAC , 120VAC , . . . ), the VCMP is different. In other words, the I1 . The expression can be presented in (6). In the same
the ILED is constant when the LED is ON (Fig. 7). And, the way, we can get the I3 -I6 . The Isum of Fig. 6 is the sum of
ILED at 90VAC is not the same as the ILED at 110VAC . the I1 -I6 , expressed by (7). From Fig. 8 and Fig. 9, we know
In Fig. 6, if the LED1 -LED6 are lighted, the voltage drop that these two curves are similar to each other. The difference
across the LED strings is VD1 -VD6 , respectively. Otherwise, between Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 is only a multiple. Furthermore, if
the voltage drop across the LED strings are 0. For simplicity, we can keep the integral of the Isum over a line cycle to be

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 1062 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: EXPRESS BRIEFS, VOL. 70, NO. 3, MARCH 2023

Fig. 9. Isum current curve of Fig. 6.

Fig. 11. 100VAC measured LED current waveform.

Fig. 10. 90VAC measured LED current waveform.

Fig. 12. 110VAC measured LED current waveform.

constant (Fig. 9), the LED power will be constant. Therefore,

we use the RF and C1 (Fig. 6) to average the Isum , and keep
its average value constant by the error amplifier.

I2 = 2 · I1 = 2 · ILED · 10−3 (6)

Isum = I1 + I2 + I3 + I4 + I5 + I6 (7)

In this section, we explained how to calculate the LED

power over a half-line cycle and how to realize the power
regulation in the circuit level. For Fig. 6, the more details of
the control mechanism can be listed as: (a) Fig. 8 shows the
LED power over a half-line cycle. (b) By switching the resis-
tor array in the constant power mechanism block, we construct
Fig. 13. 120VAC measured LED current waveform.
the Isum current. The Isum shape in Fig. 9 is similar to the LED
power shape in Fig. 8. (c) Although the Isum is not equal to the Overall, the tradeoff or drawbacks of the proposed schemes
LED power, the Isum can indicate the LED power variation. are: (a) There is a tradeoff between the LED segments and the
(d) We average the Isum by using C1 and RF , and regulate it efficiency. However, the more LED segments, the more I/O
to a constant by the error amplifier. pins are required. (b) The efficiency of the proposed driver is
usually slightly lower than that of the switch-mode converters.
IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS This drawback is present in all linear LED driver solutions.
Fig. 10 shows that the LED current is about 280mA at
90VAC , and Fig. 11 shows that the LED current is about V. C ONCLUSION
253mA at 100VAC . Fig. 12∼13 show that the LED cur- This brief presents a new LED control scheme, which can
rent are about 227mA and 228mA in 110VAC and 120VAC , keep the constant power over a line cycle. The experimental
respectively. results show that the method can effectively regulate the LED
The results reveal that the proposed method can properly power to avoid overheating at the higher line voltages. This
control the LED current to keep a constant power (Fig. 14). chip has been successfully fabricated by Macronix Co. The
The component layout of the demo board is shown in Fig. 15. efficiency of the proposed scheme is about 85%-88%, and

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 CHOU: DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LINEAR LED DRIVER 1063

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