The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 12, 2013
Filed:
Nov. 23, 2010
Jim-hung Liang, Taipei, TW;
Jim-Hung Liang, Taipei, TW;
Skynet Electronic Co., Ltd., Taipei, TW;
Abstract
The present invention is to provide a ballast circuit, which includes a preheat circuit configured to perform a fixed-time, fixed-frequency preheating process on filaments at both ends of a fluorescent light tube before it is lit. While the filaments are being preheated, a power driving circuit generates an output signal whose frequency is far higher than resonant frequency of a resonant circuit, and controls the preheat circuit for enabling a filament transformer and a high-frequency coupling capacitor in the preheat circuit to couple the voltage of the output signal to the filaments and thereby preheat the filaments, but not light up the light tube. When the preheat period is up, the power driving circuit stops the preheating process and changes the frequency of the output signal to a level close to the resonant frequency, thereby oscillating the resonant circuit and generating a high voltage enough for lighting the light tube.