This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TPEL.2020.3005571, IEEE
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Letters_____________________________________
I2V2 Average Current Control for Modular LED Drivers
Yong Qu, Member, IEEE, and Lei Qiu
Abstract– Present LED drivers often exhibit difficulty in
meeting the increasing demand for compact size, flexible
multiphase configuration, accurate current regulation, and fast
transient response. In this letter, we present an output-
capacitorless modular LED driver that simultaneously achieves
these attributes by the realization of monolithic integration and
the employment of our proposed I2V2 average current control.
The proposed control based on pulse width modulation (PWM),
considers the complete LED current profile to obtain accurate
current regulation, and combines the feedforward signals of the
inductor current, input voltage, and the output voltage to
accelerate the transient response. To verify the proposed I2V2
average current control scheme, we monolithically realize a
modular LED driver that embodies a tiny 1.8µH inductor and
supports an input voltage range of 5-18 V, output LED current of
1A, switching frequency of 2MHz, LED current settling time of
1.3µs, and the peak power efficiency of 94.5%. When being
benchmarked against state-of-the-art counterparts, the proposed
design features at least 2.6× smaller output inductor, 2.3× shorter
settling time, and 2.5% higher peak power efficiency.
Index Terms– LED driver, modular DC-DC converter, average
current control, fast transient response, pulse width modulation
I. INTRODUCTION
Light-emitting diode (LED) lighting is now ubiquitous in
automotive and industrial applications [1-3], in part because of
its improved luminous efficacy and enhanced reliability over
its incandescent and fluorescent counterparts [4]. The
requirements of the LED driver for these applications are
stringent, including compact size, flexible multiphase
configuration, accurate current regulation, and fast transient
response.
Compact size is desirable to meet the increasing demand for
miniaturization and dense integration. However, this
parameter is often compromised by conventional LED drivers
[5], [6] due to their adoption of discrete power transistors and
bulky passive components (i.e., output inductor and output
capacitor). It is well recognized that their size can be
effectively reduced by integrating these power transistors on a
single chip and increasing the LED driver switching frequency
which desirably requires less stored energy within each
switching cycle [7].
Manuscript received April 12, 2020; accepted June 25, 2020.
(Corresponding author: Lei Qiu)
Y. Qu is with the Texas Instruments, Freising 85356, Germany (e-
mail: qy2016@gmail.com). L. Qiu is with Tongji University,
Shanghai 201804, China (e-mail: qiulei@tongji.edu.cn).
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The fully integrated LED driver IC without the adoption of
large heat sinks typically offers a limited power driving
capability (e.g., ~10W) and thus multiphase configuration
realized by separate IC modules needs to be employed for a
larger power driving capability. Despite smaller current ripple
and better distributed thermal dissipation in comparison with
single-phase counterpart, conventional multiphase LED
drivers [5], [8] often suffer from low flexibility due to their
centralized control methodology, wherein all power stages
share the same controller and sensing signal of LED current.
Thus, a modular LED driver supporting flexible configuration
between single-phase and multiphase is highly desirable.
Although pulse-frequency modulation (PFM) offers simple
hardware realization, the state-of-the-art LED drivers for the
aforesaid applications employ pulse-width modulation (PWM)
because of its controllable switching frequency and ensuing
predictable electromagnetic interference (EMI) spectrum. As a
result, EMI can be easily mitigated.
Reported PWM control schemes include peak (or valley)
current control and average current control [9-13]. The generic
peak current control [7] suffers from imprecise regulation of
LED current because it only regulates the peak LED current
regardless of considering the other profile (e.g., the valley
inductor current, input voltage, and inductor value) that
potentially degrade the regulation accuracy. Moreover, the
peak current control requires a dedicated slope compensator to
circumvent potential subharmonic oscillations [14], [15]. In a
different approach, the average current control offers high
regulation accuracy by considering the whole inductor current
profile, and has no risk of subharmonic oscillations.
Interestingly, although the average current control [9] offers
the aforesaid merits, it is rarely employed for LED drivers.
The reasons include its higher demand for current-sensing and
ensuing low transient response which directly determines the
LED current settling time at startup and dimming scenarios
[4], [6]. Put simply, an integrated average-current-controlled
modular LED driver with integrated current-sensing and fast
transient response is highly desirable.
This letter presents an output-capacitorless modular LED
driver that simultaneously features compact size, flexible
multiphase configuration, accurate current regulation, and fast
transient response. These attributes are achieved by the
monolithic integration and the proposed I2V2 average current
control scheme. The proposed control scheme and its circuitry
implementation for a modular LED driver are delineated in
Section II. Section III demonstrates the measurement results
of the realized modular LED driver prototype, and finally,
Section IV presents the conclusion.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TPEL.2020.3005571, IEEE
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VIN (e.g. 12V) MP VX EN

Voltage Detectors VDIS

CIN VGP iL iIN
L
HS Gate LS Gate VGN
Driver Driver MN N·
IREF
iLED
Discharge VO iL
Adaptive Dead-
Circuit IREF
Time Controller VDIS 0A
iC
LDNMOS Valley LEDs
LDPMOS Peak State Machine CO t
Current Sensor VCOMP
Current Sensor
IVY1, 2 VSSH
IPK1,2 VIN VO VRAMP
RAMP LDO &
Starter &
2 2
Proposed I V Average VREF Bandgap
DIM Current Controller Reference RS
Dimmer EN VDDL VPWM
t
t0 t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7 t8
(a) (b)
Fig. 1 Proposed modular LED driver. (a) System architecture, and (b) operational waveforms

II. PROPOSED MODULAR LED DRIVER
A. System Architecture
Fig. 1(a) depicts the system architecture of the proposed
modular LED driver, where the circuits within the blue box
are integrated on a single chip. To obtain high voltage and
large current handling capability, power transistors MP and MN
are realized by lateral diffused Metal Oxide Semiconductor
(LDMOS), while functional controllers and current sensors
herein are realized by low-voltage MOS for low overhead
consumption. As all LED current passes through either MP or
MN, the proposed design features fully on-chip current-sensing
by the employment of LDPMOS peak and LDNMOS valley
current sensors [4].
Fig. 1(b) demonstrates the operational waveforms of the
proposed modular LED driver, where EN is the enable signal
for the proposed controller. iIN, iL and IREF are the input
current, inductor current, and the current reference,
respectively. iC and VCOMP are respectively the error current
and voltage at nodes A and B (see Fig. 2(a) later). For a soft
startup, the initial voltages for VC and VCOMP are set as low and
high, respectively. The LED current is averagely regulated
with the reference of N·IREF, wherein N is the current-sensing
ratio between the LED current and the replica current.
B. Proposed I2V2 Average Current Control
Fig. 2(a) depicts the schematic implementation of the
proposed I2V2 average current controller, where RS is an off-
chip resistor for the generation of current reference, IREF =
VREF / RS. IPK1 (or IPK2) and IVY1 (or IVY2) are the replica currents
from the on-chip peak and valley current sensors, respectively.
The proposed PWM-based controller considers the complete
LED current profile and thus obtains accurate current
regulation. Fast transient response is also achieved by
combining the feedback loop current (VC/R3) with the
feedforward signals of the sensed inductor current (IPK2 and
IVY2), output voltage VO, and the input voltage VIN.
The leading edge blanker is employed to improve the
regulation accuracy by removing the inaccurate portions of
sensed replica current, which are caused by the current
switching of power transistors [9]. The compensation network
is integrated on the chip to reduce the bill of materials (BOM)
cost and shorten the development period of commercial LED
light products.
The operation principle of the proposed controller is as
follows: when the controller enable signal toggles from low to
high (EN=1) at t = t0 in Fig. 1(b), the voltages VC and VCOMP in
Fig. 2(a) commence to rise and decrease, respectively. iC =
IREF. Once VCOMP drops lower than the ramp VRAMP at t = t1, the
PWM modulator outputs high VPWM = 1. Subsequently, the
high-side power transistor MP in the synchronous power stage
is turned on and iL starts to increase sharply due to the high
voltage drop across the inductor. VO is quickly charged up to
the determined value (i.e., the forward voltage of LEDs)
because of no output capacitor. After a small dead-time Δt, the
transmission gate, consisting of M6 and M7, is turned on, error
current, iC = IREF - IPK1 - IVY1, is generated at node A and flows
to the compensation network. Thereafter, VPWM becomes low
at t = t2 and the low-side power transistor MN gets turned on
for inductor current freewheeling. By this mechanism, the
controller repeats the modulation in the next cycle.
Suppose a sudden voltage drop occurs at the input (ΔVIN)
during MP is on, this perturbation results in a smaller inductor
increase (ΔiL) and a lower output voltage (ΔVO). By the
employment of feedforward circuits, these variations are
collectively reflected at node B, resulting in a direct voltage
drop of VCOMP. This introduces a larger PWM duty cycle and
mitigates the effects caused by the aforesaid input voltage
drop. In comparison with the feedback regulation loop, these
feedforward circuits offer a substantially faster transient
response to line or load perturbations.
Fig. 2(b) illustrates the loop gain of the modular LED driver
embodying the proposed controller, wherein the loop gain
LG(s) of the proposed modular LED driver can be
approximately derived as
1 R0 R4 VIN 1 sR2C2 + 1
LG(s)      
N RLED R3 VM s 2 LCO + 1 (sR0C2 + 1)(sR2C1 + 1)
sR3C3 + 1
 + GVIN (s) + GVO (s) + GIL (s) (1)
sR4C4 + 1

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS

VDDL Feedforward Circuits VO VIN

Leading Edge Blanker VO VIN

M1 M4 Gain
VPWM
M8 gm1 gm2 V/I P1 1/(R0·C2)
Converters DC Gain
M2 M5 IPK2 IVY2 VCOMP
Delay t B
P2 1/(R2·C1)

IREF EN VPWM Z1 1/(R2·C2)

R1 M9
R4 VRAMP fC
C4
iC M6 CMP
VREF M7 VC 0 f
M10 Modulator Unity Gain
M3 A
AMP P3 1/(R4·C4)
R2 Z2 1/(R3·C3)
IREF =VREF / RS C3 EN
M11 R0 >> R2
R0 C1 Conjugate Poles P4 = P5 1/(L·CO)0.5
RS Off-Chip IPK1 IVY1 C2 R3 R5 R3 >> R5
AGND C2 >> C1
On-Chip LDMOS Current Sensors On-Chip Compensation Network
(a) (b)
Fig. 2 Proposed I2V2 average current controller. (a) Schematic implementation, and (b) loop gain

where R0 is a pseudo resistor that represents the equivalent

resistance at node VC, N is the on-chip current-sensing ratio
and RLED is the LED load resistance. CO is the parasitic High-Side Gate Driver Proposed
capacitance at the output. GVIN(s), GVO(s) and GIL(s) are the I2V2
transfer functions of the input voltage, output voltage, and the Average
inductor current feedforward circuits. At the steady state, their High-Side Switch Current
LDPMOS MP Controller
values are constant. Equation (1) shows that the LED driver

system has two zeros (Z1 ≈ 1/R2C2, Z2 ≈ 1/R3C3) and five poles
(P1 ≈ 1/R0C2, P2 ≈ 1/R2C1, P3 ≈ 1/R4C4, P4 = P5 ≈ 1/(LCO)1/2).
An on-chip modified current-mode type III compensation
network [9], [15] is purposely adopted to ascertain the stability
of the proposed design by offering two zeros (i.e., Z1 and Z2)
at desirable frequency domains.
Due to the absence of output capacitors, the conjugate poles
(i.e., P4 and P5) arising from the output L·CO low-pass filter
are located at a high-frequency domain which is beyond the
crossover frequency fC. Hence, high phase margin and fast
transient response are obtained by judiciously setting P1, P2
and Z1 within the unity gain. Further, the compensation
network is robust enough to tolerate the impacts arising from
the output inductors, thereby the proposed modular LED
driver is stable to operate with the configuration of either
single-phase or multiple-phase.
Consequent to the proposed controller, accurate current
regulation and fast transient response can be obtained. The
robust on-chip compensator attributes to the monolithic
integration of the proposed modular LED driver.
III. MEASUREMENT RESULTS
Fig. 3 shows the microphotograph of the proposed modular
LED driver with a dimension of 2.5×2.0 mm2. The design
specifications are listed in the following benchmark Table I.
For the sake of brevity, the performance of the proposed
modular LED driver with an input voltage of 12V driving 2
series-connected LEDs will be described herein. A tiny output
inductor of 1.8µH and a high switching frequency of 2MHz
are conducted for the following measurements.
Fig. 4 depicts the measured waveforms of the proposed
modular LED driver with an LED current of 1.0A. The yellow
2.0 mm
State
Dead-Time, Voltage Detector Machine
Low-Side Switch
LDNMOS MN Other
Blocks
Low-Side Gate Driver
2.5 mm
Fig. 3 Microphotograph of the proposed modular LED driver
and the blue curves are the switching node voltage VX and the
inductor current iL, respectively. This figure demonstrates that
the proposed design offers a good PWM dimming
performance and a fast transient response by achieving a short
LED current settling time of only 1.3µs.
Fig. 5 shows the measured waveforms of two proposed
modular LED drivers in dual-phase configuration, wherein
phase 1 is in a 180° phase shift with phase 2. Due to their
interleaving operation, the current ripple cancellation effect is
realized and a large output current (i.e., 2.0A) with small
current ripples is desirably obtained. A good current balance
between these two phases is also achieved attributed to their
adoption of the proposed controller. For all cases, no
subharmonic oscillation is observed even though the PWM
duty cycle is larger or smaller than 0.5.
Table I compares the performance of the proposed design
with several state-of-the-art LED drivers. In terms of transient
response (which can be qualified by current settling
performance), the proposed modular LED driver is the most
competitive design by featuring a substantially ~2.3× shorter
LED current settling time. This is mainly because of the
proposed I2V2 average current control scheme.

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Table I
PERFORMANCE COMPARISONS WITH STATE-OF-THE-ART LED DRIVERS
This Work 2014 [2] 2015 [6] 2016 [7] 2017 [14]
Power Transistors Integrated Discrete Integrated Integrated Discrete
Current Sensors On-Chip Off-Chip Resistor
I2V2 Average Peak Current Peak Current Peak Current
Control Methodology Digital Control
Current Control Control Control Control
Slope Compensation No N.A. Yes Yes Yes
Input Voltage (V) 5-18 8-18 6.5-36 3-15 3-30
LED Current (A) 1.0 1.0 0.35 1.0 1.0
Output Capacitor (µF) – 0.1 10 1.0 10
Output Inductor (µH) 1.8 22 22 4.7 15
Switching Frequency
2.0 0.5 0.2 1.6 1.0
(MHz)
Settling Time (µs) 1.3 20 40 30 3.0
Peak Power Efficiency 94.5% 89.7% 90% 90% 92%

VIN = 12V driving 2 series-connected LEDs with Dual-Phase: Two Modular LED Drivers in Parallel Operation
ILED= 1.0A, L=1.8μH, fSW = 2.0MHz VIN = 12V driving 2 LEDs with ILED= 2.0A, L=1.8μH, fSW = 2.0MHz
Phase 1
VX1
IL1

VIN = 12V

Phase 1 is in an interleaving 180°phase shift with Phase 2, ILED = IL1 + IL2 = 2.0A

VX VX2
IL2

IL (i.e. ILED)
Phase 2
(a)
Zoom in the PWM
Dual-Phase: Two Modular LED Drivers in Parallel Operation
dimming waveforms VIN = 12V driving 2 LEDs with ILED= 2.0A, L=1.8μH, fSW = 2.0MHz
1.5μs
LED Current Settling Time (1.3μs)
VX1

IPK 1.3A Phase 1

ILED = 1A
Phase 2 VX2
IVY 0.7A
ILED = IL1 + IL2 = 2.0A

Phase 1 is in an interleaving 180°phase shift with Phase 2,

fSW = 2.0MHz
Fig. 4 Measured waveforms of one proposed modular LED
driver
In terms of switching frequency, the proposed design
supports the highest switching frequency. This is because of
the realized monolithic integration and its ensuing small
parasitic capacitance and inductance.
In terms of LED driver size, the proposed design is
arguably the most competitive design by integrating all
functional blocks on a single chip, including power transistors
and current sensors. Furthermore, the proposed design adopts
hence output current ripple cancellation is desirably achieved.
(b)
Fig. 5 Measured waveforms of two proposed modular LED
drivers in dual-phase interleaving configuration. (a) Phase
current, and (b) total output LED current
substantially smaller passive components (i.e., output
capacitor and output inductor). Specifically, the output
inductor is a significant ~2.6× smaller than the next most-
competitive design. No off-chip current-sensing resistor and
no output capacitor are employed in the proposed design. This
desirably reduces the bill of materials (BOM) cost and printed
circuit board (PCB) footprint.

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[14] Analog Devices. (2017). LT3517 Datasheet - Full-Featured

IV. CONCLUSION LED Driver with 1.5A Switch Current [Online]. Available:
https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-
This letter presented a monolithically integrated modular documentation/data-sheets/3517fh.pdf
LED driver that obtained compact size, flexible multiphase [15] M. G. Kim, "High-performance current-mode-controller design
configuration, accurate current regulation, and fast transient of buck LED driver with slope compensation," IEEE Trans.
response. These attributes were obtained by the employment Power Electron., vol. 33, no. 1, Jan. 2018.
of our proposed I2V2 average current controller. When being
benchmarked against the state-of-the-art counterparts in Table
I, the proposed modular LED driver was shown to be the most
competitive design by simultaneously featuring the smallest
output inductor, highest switching frequency, shortest settling
time, and the highest peak power efficiency.

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