Digital control methods of two-stage electronic ballast for metal halide lamps with a ZVS-QSW converter

This paper presents a new kind of digital control metal halide lamp electronic ballast. A zero-voltage-switch quasi-square-wave (ZVS-QSW) dual Buck converter is adopted here. In this paper, a digital control method is proposed to achieve ZVS for the converter. This ZVS can be realized during the whole working condition. Single-cycle-peak-current control is proposed to solve the problem of excessive inductor current during a low-frequency reversal transient. Power loop control is also realized and its consistency for different lamps is good. An AVR special microcontroller for a HID ballast is used to raise the control performance, and the low-frequency square-wave control method is adopted to avoid acoustic resonance. A 70W prototype was built in the laboratory. Experimental results show that the electronic ballast works reliably. Furthermore, the efficiency of the ballast can be higher than 92%.