Lighting consumes approximately 20-25% of the energy produced worldwide. LED based lighting is rapidly becoming the preferred choice over incandescent and fluorescent based lighting. LEDs have advantages such as high efficacy, long operating lifetime and excellent lumen maintenance. Therefore, to gain benefits from LEDs for lighting purposes, they must be driven with efficient drivers which maintain high LED efficacy and long LED lifetime. A review of existing LED drivers is done, and their advantages and drawbacks are identified. Existing fault-tolerant drivers are also reviewed. Several dimming methods and their effects on the LED efficacy and lifetime are investigated. As a result, a converter with coupled inductors, suitable as an LED driver which has high efficiency and can maintain high LED efficacy, incorporated with a high efficiency dimming method, is chosen. For the proposed LED driver, a comprehensive analysis on the effects of coupling type and coupling coefficient on converter performance is done. This is carried out to establish the best coupled inductor structure and coupling coefficient, for the proposed LED driver. The coupled inductor obtained is used to achieve high LED efficacy and also used to eliminate the need for an output filtering capacitor. This results in a highly compact, high efficiency and low cost LED driver. A lossless method of LED string current sensing is proposed, so that driver efficiency is not negatively impacted. The LED driver and a digital control system are designed, with the fault-tolerant feature incorporated. The LED driver and the control system are simulated and practically implemented. The results obtained show excellent LED driver performance. The fault-tolerant feature can enable the driver to operate under fault conditions, saving repair costs and down time. Additionally, a novel digitally controlled LED driver, which can drive several independent multiple LED loads, is proposed. This novel driver is simulated and practically implemented; with the results showing excellent driver performance. The novel LED driver can simplify and reduce costs of existing LED lighting systems. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / Unrestricted