Infineon announces 'user-friendly' LCC design tool

Power factor correction (PFC) plus LCC resonant topology for constant current output has proven to offer outstanding efficiency combined with a large output voltage range in high-power LED lighting applications, such as outdoor and horticultural lighting. However, the high design effort and complexity have been limiting the widespread usage of this well-suited and efficient topology in LED drivers.

Infineon has introduced the LCC design tool, aiming to make a highly efficient yet complex design topology such as PFC plus LLC accessible to a broad LED driver manufacturer community at no additional cost. PFC plus LCC topology is 5 to 6% more efficient than other commonly used two-stage topologies. However, the design of LED drivers with this topology is highly time-consuming. Infineon's LCC tool, which is a novelty in the market, makes the design work much faster and easier.

"Our new LCC design tool offers a streamlined solution for designers to deploy highly efficient and reliable PFC plus LLC solutions in reduced time and effort, bypassing a time-consuming iterative design approach," said Hakan Yilmazer, Head of Application Management Lighting at Infineon Technologies. "Assuming that 300 million LED drivers with an average power of 60 W were converted from less efficient topologies to PFC plus LCC topology, the energy produced by one large coal power plant with a capacity of 1000MW could be saved per year. This is now possible with the support of Infineon's LCC tool as well as the broad portfolio of suitable controllers and power switches."

PFC plus LCC topology is the most favourable version of PFC plus resonant topology due to the wide output voltage range that can be achieved, offering high efficiency of up to 94%. Resonant topologies are usually used for power ranges greater than 100W by most LED driver vendors, where the topology benefits are most prominent. This topology is not limited to high-power LED drivers only, but it can also be deployed in power ranges down to 40W as an alternative topology to Flyback plus DC-DC buck. With Infineon's LCC design tool, designers can enter their key parameters, and the tool will provide them with the necessary data to design their circuit, reducing their time and effort to design the circuit by more than 50%.

In addition, for this topology, Infineon offers two very well-suited high-performance and highly integrated combo controllers, the ICL5102 and ICL5102HV, that can fulfil the PFC and resonant functions. These ICs can be operated at a maximum frequency of up to 500kHz continuously due to their particular architecture, which helps to minimise the bill of materials, especially for passive components. Thanks to their low switching losses, Infineon's CoolMOS 600 V P7 and 950 V PFD7 families are also a perfect match for such higher-frequency designs. By using these products, an efficiency increase of 5-6% of the LED drivers can be offered to lighting fixture customers without or with a negligible cost adder.