IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 59, NO.

4, APRIL 2012

1799

HID Lamp Electronic Ballast Based

on Chopper Converters
Fabio Luis Tomm, Member, IEEE, lysson Raniere Seidel, Member, IEEE, Alexandre Campos, Member, IEEE,
Marco A. Dalla Costa, Member, IEEE, and Ricardo Nederson do Prado, Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper proposes some topologies for developing

electronic ballasts, supplying high-intensity discharge lamps fed
by a pulsewidth-modulation acac converter, implemented with
bidirectional switches. The lamp operates directly from the ac
mains; thus, operation with low frequency so as to prevent the
occurrence of destructive acoustic resonance is provided. The
features of the proposed solution are high efficiency, high power
factor, low cost, and the absence of electrolytic capacitors. This paper includes the design of passive elements, the transfer function,
and the development of the control strategy. The experimental
results qualify the viability of the system feasibility.
Index TermsACAC conversion, acoustic resonance (AR)
phenomenon, ballasts, current control, high-intensity discharge
(HID), ignition, lamps.

Fig. 1. Functional block diagram of classic LFSW electronic ballasts.

I. I NTRODUCTION

IGH-INTENSITY DISCHARGE (HID) lamp lighting

systems are widely used to provide a high-intensity light
level for outdoor usages such as vehicle headlight, industrial,
and street lighting. These lamps are cheap, their average life
spans are more than 26 000 h long, and they produce light with
efficiency higher than 90 lm/W, which make them indispensable
for the aforementioned usages. Traditionally, magnetic ballasts
were the usual choice available for HID lighting systems, but
they use bulky and heavy line-frequency inductors to limit the
lamp current and to provide ignition. Electromagnetic ballasts
present low cost and are simple and reliable [1]. However,
they have several drawbacks, including large size and weight,
low power factor, low efficiency, poor power regulation, and
sensitivity to line voltage sags. Nowadays, high-efficiency
electronic HID ballasts are also available and can provide an
increased lighting quality. At the same time, a reduction of
the aforementioned drawbacks of magnetic ballasts can be
achieved. Unfortunately, electronic ballasts still have higher

Manuscript received September 30, 2010; revised December 23, 2010

and February 8, 2011; accepted February 25, 2011. Date of publication
March 28, 2011; date of current version November 1, 2011. This work was
supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) under Proclamation 479046/08-5 and Pr-Publicaces Internacionais/PRPGP/UFSM.
F. L. Tomm is with the Federal University of Pampa (UNIPAMPA), Bag
96413-170, Brazil (e-mail: fabiotomm@gmail.com).
. R. Seidel, A. Campos, M. A. Dalla Costa, and R. N. do Prado are with
the Electronic Ballast Research Group (GEDRE), Federal University of Santa
Maria (UFSM), Santa Maria 97105-900, Brazil (e-mail: seidel@gedre.ufsm.br;
alexandre@gedre.ufsm.br; marcodc@gedre.ufsm.br; rnprado@ieee.org).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2011.2134061

Fig. 2. Functional block diagram of acac electronic ballasts.

cost and lower reliability, mainly due to the use of electrolytic

capacitors [2].
The conventional way of supplying HID lamps by means
of electronic ballasts is applying a low-frequency squarewaveform (LFSW) current in order to avoid the acoustic resonance (AR) phenomenon [3], [4]. These electronic ballasts
demand three power stages: power factor correction, lamp
power control provided by a dcdc converter, and inverter
stage. Moreover, any of these stages also require a driver,
which increases the overall cost of the circuit [5][8]. Fig. 1
shows the block diagram of classic LFSW electronic ballasts.
Therefore, many efforts are being made in order to integrate
stages [9], [10]. However, it is well known that the integration
of stages results in voltage or current stress in the shared switch,
and these circuits still need the presence of large electrolytic
capacitors.
This paper brings a solution to this and other problems
by feeding the lamp with an ac line-frequency sine-waveform
current [11] in order to maintain the stability and maintain the
power ripple below the AR threshold requirement. The switching frequency is still maintained high in order to guarantee the
efficiency and to minimize the converter magnetic elements.
The proposed solution to achieve this electronic ballast is
by using an acac converter, as shown in Fig. 2 [12]. The
topologies which have the potential to achieve this goal are

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the buck, buckboost, SEPIC, zeta, and Cuk

converters. With
the exception of the buck converter for this application, all of
them allow reaching a high power factor and a reduction on the
number of active switches to only two. Moreover, electrolytic
capacitors are not necessary in this application.
The buck acac converter was applied to supply a 250-W
high-pressure sodium (HPS) lamp in [13]. However, this electronic ballast supplies the lamp with an ac line-frequency
waveform without filtering the high-frequency (HF) switching
component. According to Dalla Costa et al. [3], power ripples
above 5% can cause AR in the lamp. Therefore, the main
contribution of this work is the analysis of several topologies
to achieve acac electronic ballasts, which supply the lamp
with the ac line-frequency current sine waveform without the
presence of the HF switching component.
The drawback of such a solution is that, when powering the
lamp at low frequency, the lamp impedance becomes nonlinear.
Therefore, some characteristics of the electromagnetic supply
are present, like reignition process each half line cycle and light
flicker at double the line frequency. Moreover, due to the fact
that the proposed topologies do not present electrolytic capacitors, which are energy-storage elements, the line variations
reach the lamp. Therefore, the control feedback must be fast
enough to compensate such variations.
Experimental results for an HPS 70-W lamp powered from
the mains (220 V 20% at 60 Hz) are presented to validate
the proposed ballast. The converter was designed to operate at
33 kHz and feeding the lamp at 60 Hz, using only two controlled power switches.
The controller is implemented with a 32-b/38 MIPS microcontroller (ColdFire Microcontroller V1), which contributes to
reducing the number of parts and the systems final cost.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II presents the
basic concepts of the proposed solution. Section III analyzes
the operation modes. A SEPIC acac test topology is presented
in Section IV. The control design is shown in Section V. The
experimental results are shown in Section VI. This paper is
concluded in Section VII.
II. BASIC C ONCEPTS
This section presents the basic concepts required to provide
the correct supplying of the HID lamp proposed in this paper. These concepts are related to the AR phenomenon, the
proposed methods to avoid it, and the lamp operating stages
(ignition, warm-up, and steady state), and a review about acac
converter systems supplying HID lamps is performed.
The lamp discharge tube is a mechanical element that
presents natural oscillation frequencies. In the case of HID
lamps, these frequencies start at 1 kHz and do not present
a theoretical upper limit. However, it has been proved that
extrahigh-frequency (above 1 MHz) electronic ballasts avoid
the AR rising [4].
The AR occurrence is mostly determined by the fact that one
or more power harmonic frequencies produced by the ballast
match the resonance frequencies of the lamp gas pressure oscillations, which produce distortions in the discharge patterns. The
periodic lamp power fluctuation results in a gas pressure ripple

Fig. 3.

Igniter circuit.

of the same frequency. If this frequency is equal to the natural

oscillation frequency of the particular discharge tube, standing
waves are generated. These waves can lead to light flicker, arc
extinction, lamp life decrease, color shift, or discharge tube
destruction [3].
Several methods have been used to try to prevent the AR
occurrence. A revision of the main methods currently known
to avoid the resonance phenomenon is presented in [1] and [4].
Electromagnetic ballasts work at mains frequency, preventing
the AR rising. This means that it is a good method to avoid
the detrimental effects of the AR phenomenon. However, this
solution presents several drawbacks, including large size and
weight, low power factor, low efficiency, poor power regulation,
and sensitivity to line voltage sags.
The use of acac converters is a solution to solve the electromagnetic ballast problems because it works at HF. Some
examples are presented in [13] and [15], where the buck acac
converter was employed to supply an HPS lamp. In this paper,

this solution will be extended to the buckboost, SEPIC, Cuk,

and zeta converters. These topologies demand four-quadrant
active switches due to that the input voltage and output current
in the lamp must be ac sinusoidal. The phase difference between
voltage input and output current is near to 0 or 180 in these
converters.

The electronic transformers formed by the buck, Cuk,

and
zeta converters have their outputs connected directly to the
lamp by an inductor and a capacitor. This arrangement makes
these converters capable of implementing a resonant ignition,
thus making the converter work in the output filter resonance
frequency, creating the voltage output required for ignition [13],
[16]. However, in order to provide a comparison among all
studied topologies, an external igniter was used, which is shown
in Fig. 3.
In the next sections, the proposed strategy to supply the lamp
during all operational stages (ignition, warm-up, and steady
state) provided by the proposed topologies is presented.
A. Lamp Ignition
Previous to ignition, the converter must charge rapidly the
capacitor (Ci), through the resistor (Ri), to reach the SIDAC
(silicon bilateral voltage-triggered switch) breakdown voltage.
During the SIDAC triggered instant, the capacitor voltage is
applied to the transformer primary winding, which applies
1.82.5 kV at the HPS lamp, through its secondary winding.

TOMM et al.: HID LAMP ELECTRONIC BALLAST BASED ON CHOPPER CONVERTERS

Fig. 4.

Control phases [17].

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is being enhanced by the electrode deteriorations. Furthermore,

if the lamp voltage reaches the upper limit, the ballast must be
turned off.
In steady state, the lamp current presents a sinusoidal
pattern, and the lamp voltage is close to a square waveform.
Moreover, during the lamp supply zero crossing, the arc is
extinguished, causing reignition and light flicker. Therefore, the
proposed topologies must increase the lamp power delivering
during the zero crossing in order to minimize the drawbacks of
low-frequency ac supply.

Buckboost, Cuk,
SEPIC, and zeta converters can apply
output voltages higher than the input voltage. However, the fast
correction and accurate control of the duty cycle are very difficult in the system design. Experimentally, it was verified that
the controller must be able to compensate for any disturbance
of the network in less than 0.1 ms in order to avoid perceptible
light flicker.

III. C IRCUIT O PERATION

The converter operation steps are presented in this section.
It is important to denote that all capacitors work at ac voltage, avoiding the use of electrolytic capacitors. Moreover, the
switch switching frequency is much higher than the ac supply
frequency. Then, the mains and lamp voltages are considered
constant during a switching period.
The converter design must pay attention to the dead time
between the main switches because, if the dead time is too large,
overvoltages will occur at these switches.
Fig. 5.

Quadrilateral diagram for a 70-W HPS lamp.

The energy stored in Ci is discharged on the lamp. The SIDAC

semiconductor returns to blocking state, and the transformer
primary current is null.
B. Lamp Warm-Up
After the ignition, the lamp equivalent impedance drastically
decreases to a value around 10% of the steady-state impedance
value. Fig. 4 shows the suggested control modes for each operation stage [17]. The proper design of the igniter inductance,
discharging the energy accumulated on capacitor Ci, must limit
the current during the ignition in 200% of the rated current.
Therefore, there are not excessive electrode detritions at this
step.
During the lamp heating phase, the ballast keeps the current
below twice the nominal current until the lamp power reaches
150% of the nominal power. The output voltage should be
monitored so that, when reaching the minimum voltage given
by the standard EN60662 and NBR IEC 662 quadrilateral
diagram in Fig. 5, the power is reduced to nominal. Then, the
steady-state phase takes place.
C. Lamp Steady State
Fig. 5 shows the required characteristics of a lamp supply
during steady state. During the lamp aging, its operating voltage

Converter
A. Cuk

The Cuk
chopper is an integration of a boost and a buck
converter. This topology, together with its four working stages,
is shown in Fig. 6, where the four-quadrant switches are used
to provide the electronic ballast correct working. Comparing
converter,
the acac converter with the conventional dcdc Cuk
it can be stated that switch S1 plays the role of the active switch
and S2 plays the role of the diode. This topology was presented
in [1].
When S1 is in ON state (D T s), the source voltage V in(t)
is applied to the inductor L1 , which can be positive [Fig. 6(a)]
or negative [Fig. 6(c)], depending on the mains half cycle. The
L2 current circulates through S1 in series with capacitor C2 .
The instantaneous voltage on C2 , in steady state, is the sum of
the instantaneous input and output voltages.
When S2 is in ON state [(1 D) T s], L1 discharges
through capacitor C2 [Fig. 6(b) and (d)]. The lamp is in parallel
with capacitor C1 , and the output voltage is applied to inductor
L2 . A difficulty of this configuration is the C2 high voltage.
However, due to L2 , which is in series with the lamp, the
value of C2 is lower than those in the SEPIC and buckboost
converters.

Equation (1) shows the duty cycle used in the acac Cuk,
buckboost, zeta, and SEPIC converters when they operate with
the inductor current in continuous conduction mode (CCM).
The duty cycle value must be updated by the control circuit

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theoretical voltage and current waveforms.

Fig. 7. Cuk

converter.
Fig. 6. ACAC Cuk

each switching period because it depends on the instantaneous

line and lamp voltages
D(t) =

|V out(t)|
.
|V in(t)| + |V out(t)|

(1)

Fig. 7 shows the theoretical waveforms that can be found in

converter in CCM.
the acac Cuk
B. BuckBoost Converter
The acac buckboost converter is shown in Fig. 8, where
L1 and C2 comprise a filter in order to filter the input current
harmonics. Capacitor C2 must handle the input voltage peak
plus the ripple. Then, L2 represents the buckboost inductor.
During D T s, switch S1 is turned on, and the voltage of
VC2 is applied to inductor L2 , which can be positive or negative
depending on the mains half cycle. The L2 current circulates

Fig. 8.

ACAC buckboost converter.

through S1 . This current is the sum of the input and output

currents.
When S2 is in ON state [(1 D) T s], L2 discharges on the
circuit consisting of capacitor C2 , and the load is submitted to
the output voltage.
An inconvenience of this circuit is that the output current
is discontinuous and, because of that, requires a higher output
capacitor than that in [15]. On the other hand, only one large
inductor on the converter is necessary.

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TABLE I
D ESIGN PARAMETERS

Fig. 9.

ACAC zeta converter.

Fig. 10. ACAC SEPIC converter.

ducted by S1 charging capacitor C2 . The instantaneous voltage

on C2 , in steady state, is the instantaneous input voltage.
When S2 is in ON state [(1 D) T s], L1 discharges on the
circuit consisting of C2 and the load in parallel with C1 . The
parallel inductor L2 to C1 is submitted to the output voltage.
The L2 current to the output of this converter is discontinuous
and, because of that, requires a high output capacitor, whereas
the input current is continuous, and the use of a large EMI filter
to reach the electrical interference standard requirements is not
necessary.

C. Zeta Converter
The acac zeta converter is shown in Fig. 9, where the input
and output have the same polarity. The zeta converter also
needs two inductors and a series capacitor, which is sometimes
called a flying capacitor (C2 ). A good characteristic of the zeta
converter is the absence of a right-half-plane zero. This makes
its dynamic transfer function be more easily compensated in
order to achieve a wider loop bandwidth and better loadtransient results with smaller output-capacitance values.
During D T s, switch S1 is turned on, and inductors L1 and
L2 store energy from the input supply; during this stage, the
load is supplied by the C2 voltage. The C2 instantaneous voltage has the same value with the instantaneous output voltage
V out(t).
When S2 is in ON state [(1 D) T s], L1 discharges
through C2 , while the energy of inductor L2 is transferred to
C1 and the load.
An inconvenience of this circuit is that the input current
is discontinuous, with a peak value equal to the sum of the
currents of inductors L1 and L2 [8], and thus needs a larger
electromagnetic interference (EMI) filter. Unlike the SEPIC
converter, which is configured similar to a standard boost
converter, the zeta converter is configured like a buck converter,
where the main switch is in series with the input source.
D. SEPIC Converter
The acac SEPIC converter is shown in Fig. 10, where the
voltage rating of capacitor C2 is the input voltage peak. As
the input voltage is sinusoidal, the capacitors must be of dualpolarity ceramic with high lifetime.
During D T s, switch S1 is turned on, and the source voltage
V in(t) is applied to inductor L1 . The L2 current is also con-

IV. D ESIGN E XAMPLE

The acac SEPIC converter was chosen in order to present
the design example and experimental results. The ballast must
feed the HPS lamp respecting the quadrilateral diagram in
Fig. 5, which shows that the minimum lamp steady-state operating voltage in 70 W is 76.5 V and the maximum is 130.2 V.
Table I was defined based on the quadrilateral diagram, and it
presents the worst case for not isolated electronic ballast acac
SEPIC design.
The current ripple in the inductors must be minimized,
thus to reduce the capacitor size. The buckboost and SEPIC
converters are the circuits that impose greater stresses at the
output capacitor because of the output current discontinuity.
The passive elements of the SEPIC converter are given by (2)
and (3) based on the values presented in Table I
C1 =

IoutPeak DAVG
V outPeak f

L1 = L2 =

(DAVG V inPeak )2
.
IoutPeak V outPeak f

(2)
(3)

Obtaining these values, the magnetic core required for the

inductors is given by (8), shown at the bottom of the next
page, where Ku is the window area utilization rate, which is
usually around 0.8. Therefore, the missing parameters in order
to design inductors L1 and L2 are the peak and rms currents,
which are shown in (4)(7), shown at the bottom of the next
page. The current density J depends on the conductive material
type applied to the winding, where copper is around 450 A/cm2
from where comes the factor 104 to convert this constant to m2 .
Bmax is the maximum flux density in the magnetic core without
the saturation effects; it is a value specified by the manufacturer,
but for commercial ferrites, it is around 0.25 T.

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TABLE II
L IST OF THE C OMPONENTS FOR THE SEPIC C ONVERTER

Fig. 11.

Switch S1 employs insulated-gate bipolar transistor technology, and switch S2 employs the CoolMOS technology. It was
performed in order to improve the converter efficiency because
the rms current through S2 is much higher than that in S1 .
The SEPIC converter components are listed in Table II. The
semiconductor S1 and S2 drive circuits are optocoupled with
voltage and current amplifiers in order to enable the rapid duty
cycle variation [18].

effective impedance is roughly equivalent to a resistor with 10%

of the equivalent resistance of the normal operation. Moreover,
a nonlinearity and small series inductance must be considered.
The proposed digital controller, presented in (13), is obtained
through the analysis of the acac SEPIC converter small-signal
model, presented in (12). Fig. 11 shows the block diagram of
the proposed control system for simulation, and Fig. 12 shows
the proposed control algorithm. The controller transfer function
was obtained by RouthHurwitz analysis and simulated using
the program Matlab. The acac SEPIC converter small-signal
model is developed using the dynamic array of the converter,
shown in (9), where a is shown in (10)

The necessary characteristics for the proposed control system

are the following: satisfactory lamp power regulation, good
disturbance rejection from the supply voltage, and to be fast
enough to rapidly compensate the lamp impedance nonlinearity. Moreover, the control system was built for maintaining
sinusoidal current in closed loop and regards the quadrilateral
diagram (Fig. 5). After arc ignition and stabilization, the lamp

V inPeak DAVG
+
2 L1 f

DAVG
1 DAVG

IL2 rms

1D
C2

D
C2

V inPeak IoutPeak
V outPeak

V inPeak DAVG
+ IoutPeak
2 L2 f

2
3
3
V out2Peak + DAVG
Iout2Peak DAVG
V in2Peak DAVG
V out2Peak
=
+
2
2
2
2 (1 DAVG )
3 L1 f

3
3
V out2Peak + DAVG
Iout2Peak
V in2Peak DAVG
V out2Peak
+
=
2
3 L21 f 2

IL2 =
IL1 rms

iL1

1
iL1

L1

iL1 0
iL2
=a

vin
+
vC 1
0

vC 2
0
vC 1

vC 2

D1
0
0
L1
1D
0
0

L2
a = 1D D1
C1 Z1Lamp
C1
C1

V. C ONTROL S YSTEM

IL1 _Peak =

Control model [20].

Ae Aw =

L_ IL_Peak IL_rms 104

Ku J Bmax

(9)

D1
L1
D
L2

. (10)

(4)
(5)

(6)

(7)
(8)

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Fig. 13. Prototype.

around the equilibrium point. It is called the linearized statespace representation by a Jacobian technique

Vin D
iL1
L1 (1D)

iL1

Vin D

iL2
iL2

L2 (1D)
(12)
+

= a
u.

vC 1

vC 2
vC 1
Vin (D2D 2 )

2
C2 ZLamp (D1)

vC 2
This plant model was discretized at twice the switch frequency. The average current-mode control was built in order
to get an equation that can be run in a low-cost ColdFire
MCF51QE32 microcontroller, being fast enough to keep the
lamp flicker to a minimum during the zero crossing of the
mains. The block Gc (z) performs the compensate calculation
of the output current error given by
Gc (z) =

Fig. 12. Control strategy for the microcontroller.

The acac SEPIC converter small-signal model, shown in

(12), is obtained solving the Taylor series (11) of system (9).
Therefore, the obtained equation has as entry the duty cycle,
which is the control variable, and the lamp current as output, as
shown in (12) [20]
f (x1 , x2 , . . . , xn )

f 
(x1 x1 )
= f (x1 , x2 , . . . , xn ) +
x1 x1


f 
f 
+
(x2 x2 )+ +
(xn xn ).
x1 x2
xn xn

105z + 100
.
100z 2 194z + 94

(13)

Regarding the control implementation by the microcontroller

shown in Fig. 12, the IRef input is a sine waveform that
controls the output current to maintain it sinusoidal even with
the randomness of the lamp operating at 50/60 Hz as load. The
reference is a table of 1100 values in 12 b multiplied by the
KPow gain. When the input voltage crosses zero, the reference
table is accessed in the first value. Moreover, if the output
voltage exceeds the maximum of the quadrilateral diagram or
the current exceeds the maximum allowed in the diagram, IRef
is also reduced.
The lamp current sensor is a pulse transformer with a fullwave rectifier with an offset of 1.5 V. Then, a band stop filter
of second order tuned to 800 Hz is added in order to not be
necessary to filter the plant natural frequency in the control law.
The controller equation in (13), applied to the plant, makes the
plant stable in closed loop. The variables behind the driver are
initialized with high values in the block output of Boot in
Fig. 12 in order to minimize the ignition impact on the plant.
VI. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS

(11)

The ac small-signal model is studied by setting D = u,

and the plant becomes the array (12) for small perturbations

A prototype of the electronic ballast projected in Section IV

was implemented in laboratory and shown in Fig. 13, where
the igniter and auxiliary source have a double Thornton Ferrite
Core NEE-25/10/6 IP6. The controller and switch of the auxiliary flyback power supply (less than 1 W), with three outputs,
were integrated with the ON Semiconductor NCP1010. The

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Fig. 14. Voltage and current on the mains and the lamp.

Fig. 16.

Fig. 15. Normalized power spectrum on the lamp.

first output is for supplying the control circuit on 3 V regulated.

Two isolated outputs are used for driving the switches on 15 V
with the Hewlett-Packard HCPL3120. The mains voltage is
conditioned for the microcontroller by a resistive divider with a
small 10-nF filter capacitor. The dead time is fixed at 150 ns on
the center-aligned 16-b pulsewidth modulation.
The experimental results of the SEPIC acac electronic
ballast are shown in Fig. 14. This figure denotes the ballast
high power factor, where all input current harmonics attended
to the IEC 61000-3-2 class-C requirements. Moreover, it is also
shown that the ballast supplies the lamp with a low-frequency
sine-waveform current without high-order harmonics, avoiding
ARs and low flicker. The action of the proposed controller can
be verified in the HPS and metal halide lamp waveforms, where
no large reignition voltage is perceived during the mains zero
crossing.
Fig. 15 shows the measurements of the output power spectrum and confirms that no high-order harmonics are present,
which could cause AR at the lamp. Several tests were performed, and the input disturbance rejection of 220 V 20%
is shown in Fig. 16, where the system control feedback compensates the output current during the input voltage disturbance.
The measured efficiency of the system is about 89.1% in steadystate operation; the power factor is 0.92, and the total harmonic
distortion is about 27.4%.
VII. C ONCLUSION
This paper has explored electronic ballasts for HID lamps
based on a direct acac conversion, implemented with fourquadrant switches. A proposed design procedure for the power

Response for the mains disturbance on the current lamp.

topologies and control for the converters has been presented.

The control solution was focused not only on the converter
performance but also on its tailoring to be implemented in a
low-cost microcontroller. Because of the acac converter, there
is no need of a dc bus, and the consequent usual electrolytic
capacitors are avoided, which considerably increases the ballast
lifetime [19]. The HF power ripple was kept below 5%, in the
case of the presented prototype; thus, no AR was observed.
The flicker levels in the lamp were significantly reduced when
compared to that in [15].
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Fabio Luis Tomm (S08M10) was born in Santo

ngelo, Brazil, in 1980. He received the B.S. and
M.S. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering
from the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM),
Santa Maria, Brazil, in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
From 2008 to 2010, he was a Professor with the
Catarinense Federal Institute, Rio do Sul, Brazil.
Since 2011, he has been with the Federal University
of Pampa (UNIPAMPA), Bag, Brazil, where he is
currently a Professor in the renewable energy engineering degree. His research interests include electronic ballasts, high-intensity discharge lamps, dimming systems, and modeling
and simulation of power converters.

lysson Raniere Seidel (M03) was born in So

Pedro do Sul, Brazil, in 1975. He received the B.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), Santa
Maria, Brazil, in 1999 and 2004, respectively.
From 2004 to 2008, he was an Associate Professor
with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Passo Fundo, Passo Fundo, Brazil. He is
currently with UFSM, where he is a Professor with
the Colgio Tcnico Industrial de Santa Maria and
a Researcher with the Electronic Ballast Research
Group (GEDRE). His research interests include resonant converters, dimming
systems, simulations, and discharge lamps.

1807

Alexandre Campos (S89M94) received the

B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from the
Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), Santa
Maria, Brazil, in 1981, the M.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from the Federal University of
Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianpolis, Brazil, in
1986, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada,
in 1994.
He is currently an Associate Professor with
UFSM. He has extensive experience in electrical and
computer engineering, specially on measuring, controlling, and compensating
power electronic systems. His main topics of interest are static power converters
applied in electronic ballasts, power filters, and static compensators. Also, his
special interests are lightning systems, embedded systems, and signal processing. He does work with innovation and entrepreneurial education techniques,
being a Specialist on CEFE (http://www.cefe.net) methodology.

Marco A. Dalla Costa (S03M09) was born in

Santa Maria, Brazil, in 1978. He received the B.S.
and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the
Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), Santa
Maria, in 2002 and 2004, respectively, and the Ph.D.
degree (with honors) in electrical engineering from
the University of Oviedo, Gijn, Spain, in 2008.
From 2008 to 2009, he was an Associate Professor
with the Universidade de Caxias do Sul, Caxias do
Sul, Brazil. Since 2009, he has been an Associate
Professor with UFSM. He is the author of more than
25 journal papers and more than 50 international conference papers. He is the
holder of two Spanish patents. His research interests include dcdc converters,
power factor correction stages, dimming systems, high-frequency electronic
ballasts, discharge-lamp modeling, electronic starters for high-intensity discharge lamps, light-emitting-diode systems, and renewable energy systems.
Dr. Dalla Costa was the recipient of the Second Prize Paper Award of the
2005 IEEE Industry Applications Society Meeting from the Production and
Application of Light Committee. He also serves as Reviewer for several IEEE
journals and conferences in the field of power electronics.

Ricardo Nederson do Prado (M00) was born in

Itapiranga, Brazil, in 1961. He received the B.Sc.,
M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Federal University of Santa Catarina
(UFSC), Florianpolis, Brazil, in 1984, 1987, and
1993, respectively.
From 1987 to 1992, he was an Assistant Professor
with the Electronics Department, Federal University
of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Since 1993,
he has been with the Federal University of Santa
Maria (UFSM), Santa Maria, Brazil, where he is
currently an Associate Professor with the Electrical Energy Processing Department. In 1997, he founded the Electronic Ballast Research Group (GEDRE).
From 2005 to 2006, he was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Fraunhofer
Institute, Sankt Augustin, Germany. He has authored more than 180 technical papers published in international journals and conference proceedings.
His research interests include high-frequency high-density power converters,
fluorescent and high-pressure lamps, dimming systems, luminous efficiency,
electronic ballasts, LED as a light source, and power factor correction.
Dr. do Prado is a founding member of the Brazilian Power Electronics
Society and a member of the Brazilian Automatic Control Society and several
IEEE societies. He is a Reviewer in the Brazilian Power Electronics Society,
the Brazilian Automatic Control Society, and several IEEE societies.