Improved Parallel Igniter for Electronic Ballast of HID Lamps

Abstract

Electronic ballast requires a high voltage igniter to start up the HID lamps. An improved parallel igniter is proposed in this paper. The basic mechanism of it has been analysed and design principle is developed. Based on this parallel igniter, the lamp series inducotr can be optimized seperately. This improves the performance of both the igniter and lamp inductor. The simulation and experimental results verified that the proposed igniter satisfies the pulse requirement especially when the HID lamps start up above the frequency of several hundred kHz.