A new cost-effective current-balancing multi-channel LED driver for a large screen LCD backlight units

Abstract

A new current-balancing multi-channel LED driver is proposed in this paper. The conventional LED driver system consists of three cascaded power conversion stages and its driver stage has the same number of expensive boost converters as those of the LED channels. On the other hand, the proposed LED driver system consists of two cascaded power stages and its driver stage requires only passive devices instead of expensive boost converters. Nevertheless, all of the currents through multi-channel LEDs can be well balanced. Therefore, it features a smaller system size, improved efficiency, and lower cost. To confirm the validity of the proposed driver, its operation and performance are verified on a prototype for a 46" LCD TV.