Basic Introduction To LED Drivers

LED driver refers to the power adjustment electronic device that drives LED light emitting or LED module components to work normally. Due to the conduction characteristics of the LED PN junction, the voltage and current fluctuation range of the power supply it can adapt to is very narrow, and a slight deviation may not be able to light the LED or the luminous efficiency is seriously reduced, or the service life is shortened or even the chip is burned. Current power frequency power supplies and common battery power supplies are not suitable for direct supply of LEDs, and LED drivers are the electronic components that can drive LEDs to operate at optimal voltage or current.

Since LED applications are almost all over the fields of electronics applications, its luminous intensity, light color and on-off control and other changes are almost unpredictable, so LED drivers have become almost one-to-one servo devices, making this device family members become varied. The simplest LED driver (if you can call it that) is probably one or several resistor-capacitor components connected in series and parallel in the loop to divide the voltage in the loop, and it is not a separate product at all. For more general commercial applications that require a stable constant current and constant voltage output, a series of system solutions with accurate power regulation capabilities have been formed. Implementing these solutions usually requires a complex circuit design, the core of which is the integrated application of LED driver ICs. By setting different support circuits around the LED driver IC, we can build solutions for different LED applications, from mobile phone display backlights and button light drivers, to high-power LED street lights and large outdoor LED displays.

The design and supply of more general-purpose high-power LED drivers are generally undertaken by professional companies. These companies repackage them into modules and supply them to manufacturers of LED end-use products. The driver design of less common LED end application products may need to be designed by yourself. It has become an important part of the unique technical content of this LED end application product. Because the LED as a packaged product is upstream, its technical performance has been solidified in the LED product, and to create a unique terminal LED application product, for the light source, in addition to the LED driver function, there are not many other places that can be worked on.
Due to the unique importance of LED drivers in LED application products and extensive user needs, LED driver ICs, as the heart of LED drivers, have become a key element in the entire technical link. Many manufacturers, including many listed companies, take LED drivers as their main products and supply LED driver ICs to downstream industries in large quantities, such as Hangzhou Silan Micro, Shenzhen Quanxin Electronics, Shenzhen Guanghuayuan Technology, Shenzhen Guomicroelectronics, China Resources Siwei Technology, Dianjing Technology, Juji Technology, Guangpeng Technology, Taijing Technology, Feihong, Maoda, Yuanchuang and so on. There are also many American manufacturers with industry leadership in this field, such as National Semiconductor Corporation, Maxim, Texas Instruments, ON Semiconductor, Sprinter Corporation, Fairchild Semiconductor and so on.

LED drive power supply is a voltage converter that converts the power supply into a specific voltage current to drive LED light, usually: the input of LED drive power supply includes high-voltage power frequency AC (that is, mains), low-voltage DC, high-voltage DC, low-voltage high-frequency AC (such as the output of electronic transformers), etc. Most of the output of the LED drive power supply is a constant current source that can change the voltage with the change of the forward voltage drop value of the LED.