A hybrid LED sink driver using a nesting-type switched-inductor/switched-capacitor buck-boost converter

This paper presents a novel light emitting diode (LED) sink driver with a high voltage gain for LED-based lighting applications. Unlike conventional LED sink drivers, the proposed driver has the nested switched-inductor/switched capacitor (SI/SC) topology consisting of an SI buck-boost converter block and a nesting-type SC cell. Owing to the nested SI/SC topology, the proposed driver offers not only a high voltage gain but also a flexible controllability of the LED currents and transformer-less structure. The effectiveness of the proposed driver is justified by some simulation results in SPICE software environment and laboratory experimental tests. In the performed simulations, the proposed driver in comparison of conventional drivers improved almost 6% power efficiency when the output power was 500 mW. Furthermore, in the performed experiments, the feasibility of the proposed topology is confirmed by demonstrating a high voltage gain and the output controllability.