Implementation of a digitally dimming controlled lighting system for two-area fluorescent lamps

The digitally dimming control interface is a new kind of dimming control for a variety of lighting applications, including building, office, and conference room; it also features remote control, real-time dimming control and lamp condition recognition. The conventional RS-232-based digitally dimming lighting system for fluorescent lamps consists of a power-factor corrector and a half-bridge resonant inverter as the main circuit, and a microcontroller-based driver and dimmer as a controller. The drawbacks of this conventional lighting system are its short transmission length and low transmission speed, and that each lighting area needs its own driver and dimmer circuit, which results in large numbers of circuit components and non-cost-effectiveness for multi-area lighting control of fluorescent lamps. Therefore, this paper presents a new digitally dimming control lighting system for fluorescent lamps. The main goal of the paper is to boost the transmission length and speed with use of a new transmission interface. A compact universal-serial-bus (USB)-based lighting system for two lighting areas are developed and measured using the function of remote dimming control in order to improve the transmission speed and to reduce circuit components as compared with the conventional version.