Driver for arrays of lighting elements

摘要

A lighting system is disclosed comprising an excitor which drives at least one reactor. The excitor is an electrical waveform generator that creates an AC waveform at a frequency between about 50 kHz and about 100 MHz. The reactor is an under-damped resonant circuit that includes a network of lighting elements. Reactive components are distributed among the lighting elements. These reactive components can regulate the current and voltage to individual lighting elements. The drive system is particularly useful for arrays of low-voltage lighting elements such as LEDs. It is fault tolerant in that the failure of individual elements need not affect the operation of remaining elements, and elements can be added and removed without affecting the serviceability of other elements.

主权项

1. A lighting system comprising
an excitor comprising an electrical waveform generator; and a reactor comprising a resonant circuit; wherein said resonant circuit comprises a plurality of reactive components and a plurality of lighting elements; wherein said excitor is operable to drive said resonant circuit; wherein the electrical waveform generator is operable to generate an AC waveform at a frequency between about 50 kHz and about 100 MHz; wherein a first subset of said plurality of reactive components determines the power in a first lighting element of said plurality of lighting elements, and a second subset of said plurality of reactive components determines the power in a second lighting element of said plurality of lighting elements; and wherein said resonant circuit is under-damped when driven by said excitor.