High frequency resonant inverter for group dimming control of fluorescent lamp lighting systems

An electronic ballast for fluorescent lamp lighting using a novel resonant inverter is proposed. The electronic ballast has high efficiency, light weight, and small size because the resonant inverter operates at high frequencies with low switching losses. The inverter output power can be continuously controlled by regulating the LC resonant tank energy of the resonant inverter. The lighting system using this resonant inverter has the prominent features of high efficacy, low flicker, low noise, wide dimming range, and soft starting. The basic operating principle of the proposed inverter and the dimming control scheme are described, and experimental results are presented