#Product Trends
Embedded Within: Three Design Trends to Watch in Smart Lighting
Solid-state lighting (SSL) systems are starting to make homes, buildings, and cities smarter, as well as energy efficient. They are also becoming more effective in color rendering and enabling saturation levels based on subjective perceptions.
Lighting components like chip-on-board (COB) LED packages now come with different wattage offerings and have more extensive lighting source options. Also, more scalable LED arrays are facilitating high-definition lighting systems that are free from glare and flicker.
What we see in the smart lighting space is a steady progression of innovative technology. Here are some highlights resonating with these design innovations:
1. COB LEDs
COB LED technology is promising to save more energy and deliver better user experiences. It packages multiple LED chips into a single module to significantly increase the lighting area while evading glare due to higher lighting content.
Cree’s COB LED technology, for instance, claims to provide up to 45 percent more lumen density and up to 17 percent higher efficacy. The company’s high-current CMT LEDs offer standard options of 70, 80, and 90 color rendering index (CRI), and premium color options that include high fidelity of 98 CRI and specialty color points.
The spectrum engineering enabled by COB LEDs allows designers to tune color spectrums to deliver greater vividness, which otherwise relies on near-ultraviolet (near-UV) lights that can be harmful to the human eye. COB LED packages are also highly suitable for directional lighting applications such as spotlights, downlights, and high-bay lights.
2. Pixel Engineering
Smart lighting systems are also moving toward scalable LED arrays in which pixels of the light beam are formed directly at the light source. To start, it allows the LED array to scale up to thousands of pixels. And each pixel can be individually switched on, off, or adjusted to optimize smart lighting control.
Besides energy efficiency, this pixel reengineering is crucial in extending the operational life of LED lights. The white LED chip from Rohm Semiconductor is a case in point. It has maintained 100 percent of its luminosity after operating for 1,000 hours; it also claims an improvement of 20x in operational life, compared to other white LED chips in the market.
Rohm’s SMLD12WBN1W white LED chip maintains 100 percent luminosity in consumer and industrial lighting applications by employing a new material for the sealing resin. Here, it’s worth mentioning that luminosity degradation is not a critical issue in red and green LEDs because they are less prone to yellowing of the resin due to lesser intensity of light energy.
3. Dimming Control
Digital dimming control has been a key highlight in smart lighting solutions for a couple of years. Here, instead of traditional TRIAC wall dimmers, LED driver chips are now enabling digital commands with interfaces like I2C to dim LED luminaires over wireless networks.
There are also LED control chips that ensure smoother brightness control and maximize energy efficiency at all dimming levels. For example, STMicro’s HVLED001B controller chip offers more than 90 percent power-conversion efficiency and no-load power consumption that is less than 100 mW.
The LED control chip also simplifies the LED lighting module design with features that support multi-platform reuse and compliance with the latest lighting regulations. Moreover, HVLED001B features built-in over-current, input over-voltage, brownout, and optocoupler failure protection.
LEDs: More Lumens per Watt
The LEDs continue to boost luminance with an increase in lumens per watt (LPW) while maintaining the color quality of incandescent light bulbs. And, depending on the actual situation, digital control allows lighting systems to select the best mode of operation, whether quasi-resonant, discontinuous conduction, or active burst modes.
Meanwhile, the new COB lineups are facilitating more desirable color tones with better object illumination. In other words, a lot is going on in smart-lighting designs.
