Philips Lighting, LED platform development was a department within Philips Lighting that did predevelopment of LED drivers and modules. Their focus was mainly on low cost, retrofit and dimmer/ballast compatibility.
Tube lights (TL) require ballasts to work and there are two types available: EM ballasts that work with a large inductor and HF ballasts that work with high frequency switch mode converters. A LED based TL replacement must be able to work behind such ballasts.
As Electronics Designer I was responsible for investigating driver concepts that can work with TL ballasts.
For this I did the following activities:
- Studied TL ballasts
- Created and tested concepts
- Automated a test set up using matlab and Scilab to evaluate concepts
- Created a test set up to test the lifetime of the built in protection mechanisms
- Documented all concepts and results
With my investigation I created the starting point for what later led to a commercially successful product.