Infineon introduces easy-to-use LCC design tools

Lighting accounts for a large proportion of global electricity consumption, so energy saving in the lighting sector is crucial. The PFC + LCC resonant topology has proven to be an excellent solution for LED lighting applications such as commercial lighting, outdoor lighting, and plant lighting, among others:

• Support constant current/constant voltage/constant power design
• Achieve the same high efficiency as PFC+LLC
• Supports a wide output voltage range

In order to facilitate engineers' design, Infineon has introduced the LCC design tool, which makes engineers' design work faster and easier.

Hakan Yilmazer, Head of Global lighting Applications Market at Infineon Technologies, said: "Our new LCC design tool provides designers with a streamlined solution that allows them to avoid cumbersome iterative design approaches and design efficient and reliable PFC + LCC solutions with less time and effort. If we convert 300 million LED drivers with an average power of 60 W from a less efficient flyback topology to a PFC + LCC topology, the annual energy savings would be equivalent to the output of a large 1,000 MW coal-fired power plant. Now, with the support of Infineon's LCC design tools, we are able to make this assumption a reality."

Among the PFC plus resonant topologies, the PFC + LCC topology is the most popular because it can achieve a wide range of output voltages with an efficiency of up to 94%. Most LED driver manufacturers usually use the resonant topology in the power range of more than 100 W, so that they can obtain the maximum benefit. However, this topology is not only suitable for high-power LED drivers, but can also be deployed in applications with power as low as 40 W, thus replacing the Flyback + DC-DC step-down topology. Designers can use Infineon's LCC design tool to design circuits - by simply entering key parameters, they can obtain the required data from the tool, saving design time and effort by more than half compared to the past.

In addition, Infineon offers two high-performance, highly integrated combination controllers for this topology - the PFC+LCC/LLC integrated Controller ICL5102 and ICL5102HV. The LCC/LLC class of these ics can operate continuously at frequencies up to 500 kHz, which will help reduce BOM (Bill of Materials) costs, especially the reduction of passive components, but also significantly improve product power density and achieve miniaturization design.

The low switching losses of the Infineon CoolMOS™ 600 V P7 and 950 V PFD7 series, as well as the CoolGaNTM, are ideal for such high frequency designs. Lighting customers using these products can increase the efficiency of LED drivers by 5-6%, with negligible or no additional cost.