LED driver design differences for different market requirements

From the perspective of the overall LED lighting system, LED chips and packaging account for a relatively high proportion of the overall cost. However, although the proportion of circuit design is not high, it is related to energy saving and carbon saving after all. How to reduce its power consumption has become a topic that system manufacturers must consider. On the other hand, LED lighting also faces many design requirements such as cost, service life and volume. In the face of many requirements at the same time, system manufacturers also pass the pressure to semiconductor manufacturers, which also makes semiconductor manufacturers face some challenges in providing solutions. Lin Zhiyan, technical marketing manager of ON Semiconductor's computing and consumer products business group, pointed out that according to his personal observation, lighting manufacturers are quite unfamiliar with circuit design. This type of problem is usually handed over to semiconductor manufacturers to find a solution, while lighting manufacturers can spend more energy on structure, optics, heat dissipation and appearance design to achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Lin Zhiyan further pointed out that since lighting companies are quite unfamiliar with circuit design, in order to meet the requirements of appearance or structural design, semiconductor companies must stand from a cooperative perspective to help customers solve all problems as much as possible. In addition, rapid mass production is required, and when developing circuit board designs, they also try to aim at "immediate shipment" and enter the shipping process as soon as possible.

The application of different circuit design concepts is also slightly different

The application fields of LED lighting can be roughly divided into indoor, outdoor and automotive lighting. Although these three fields can still be subdivided into many categories, in general, there is not much difference in circuit design. The more different factors are mostly operating temperature, system volume, reliability and cost. For example, indoor lighting applications, such as home or commercial fields, will pay more attention to cost and system volume issues. If it is outdoor lighting, it may not be necessary to consider cost, but operating temperature and reliability will be relatively important. As for automotive lighting, although it does not require the help of AC-DC components, it is highly related to personal safety after all, and it will also have special requirements in terms of reliability and life.

Different requirements for indoor and outdoor

Compared with indoor lighting, outdoor lighting has a more stringent operating environment, and the level of suppliers varies greatly. At present, there is no clear standard for outdoor lighting. It is expected that it will take some time for the outdoor lighting market to grow further in the future. But leaving the external environment aside, in fact, the power demand for outdoor lighting is higher. The main reason is that there are more LED lights. After connecting in series, the power will also increase. If it is connected in parallel, it will also face the problem of conduction voltage. Therefore, if it is to develop into outdoor lighting, its solution must be relatively complete to meet the design requirements.

Both indoor and outdoor lighting require AC-DC components to convert AC to DC, but they still need the assistance of DC-DC to light up LED light sources. Although both types of components are very important, the former must carry high voltages of 110V or 220V, which makes it more difficult to enter the market. The latter has a lower entry threshold and more intense competition.