News

IR Intros New Version Lighting Ballast Design Software

November 13, 2005 by Jeff Shepard

Power-management semiconductor firm International Rectifier Corp. (IR, El Segundo, CA) introduced Version 4.0 of its ballast design assistant software, IRPLBDA4, which reduces electronic ballast design time, producing a schematic and complete bill of materials. The software supports 38 lamp types and seven different ballast configurations. Users can add new lamp types. Over 20 parameters are selectable by the user, including frequency, voltage, current, and component values. Universal ac mains voltages are supported, including 80 V to 140 V and 185 V to 265 V (with or without power-factor correction), 24 Vdc, and more.

New features in this version include support for dc input-voltage applications and a new time domain graph feature. The new graph feature is based on a simplified numerical analysis technique, and shows ballast output waveforms, including the half-bridge voltage, lamp voltage and current, and resonant inductor and resonant capacitor current. The software generates designs for the IR2520D compact fluorescent lamp ballast control IC and the IR2161 intelligent control IC for low-voltage halogen lamp transformers in addition to other electronic ballast ICs such as the IR2156, IR21571, IR21592, IR2166, and IR2167.

Also included is an inductor calculator that creates winding specifications for the resonant output inductor as well as the power-factor correction inductor if used. The software is compatible with Windows XP operating systems. The IRPLBDA4 ballast design software is available free from the company's lighting web page, after registering for the program.