Comparative Study on Sinusoidal and Square Wave Driving Methods of EEFL (External Electrode Fluorescent Lamp) for LCD TV Backlight

EEFLs are mostly driven by sinusoidal wave driving method although EEFLs (external electrode fluorescent lamps) are driven by both sinusoidal wave and square wave. The sinusoidal driving method reduces the cost and allows more power efficiency since this driving method can reduce the voltage stress of EEFL inverter switches and achieve the soft switching of the switches. And a transformer should be used in the inverter since the high voltage should be applied to the both ends of EEFL to turn on the lamp. However, the power loss mainly occurs at the transformer in the sinusoidal wave driving method. In order to remove the transformer which makes the power loss, a new method is presented. In this paper, the square wave is applied directly to the both ends of EEFL by a proposed multi-stage inverter. Moreover, the luminance and power efficiency is compared between the common sinusoidal wave driving method and square wave driving method