The present invention relates to color electro-luminescent (EL) display system devices and, more particularly, to arrangements of light-emitting elements and electrical layouts in such color display system devices.
Flat panel, color displays for displaying information, including images, text, and graphics are widely used. These displays may employ any number of known technologies, including liquid crystal light modulators, plasma emission, electro-luminescence (including organic light-emitting diodes), and field emission. Such displays include entertainment devices such as televisions, monitors for interacting with computers, and displays employed in hand-held electronic devices such as cell phones, game consoles, and personal digital assistants. In these displays, the resolution of the display is always a critical element in the performance and usefulness of the display. The resolution of the display specifies the quantity of information that can be usefully shown on the display and the quantity of information directly impacts the usefulness of the electronic devices that employ the display.
However, the term “resolution” is often used or misused to represent any number of quantities. Common misuses of the term include a reference to the number of light-emitting elements or to the number of full-color groupings of light-emitting elements (typically referred to as pixels) as the “resolution” of the display. This number of light-emitting elements is more appropriately referred to as the addressability of the display. Within this document, we will use the term “addressability” to refer to the number of light-emitting elements per unit area of the display device. A more appropriate definition of resolution is to define the size of the smallest element that can be displayed with fidelity on the display. One method of measuring this quantity is to display the narrowest possible, neutral (e.g., white) horizontal or vertical line on a display and to measure the width of this line, or to display an alternating array of neutral and black lines on a display and to measure the period of the smallest alternating pattern having a minimum contrast. Note that using these definitions, as the number of light-emitting elements increases within a given display area, the addressability of the display will increase while the resolution, using this definition, generally decreases. Therefore, counter to the common use of the term “resolution”, the quality of the display is generally improved as the resolution becomes finer in pitch or smaller.
The term “apparent resolution” refers to the perceived resolution of the display as viewed by the user. Although methods for measuring the physical resolution of the display device are typically designed to correlate with apparent resolution, it is important to note that this does not always occur. At least two important conditions exist under which the physical measurement of the display device does not correlate with apparent resolution. The first of these occur when the physical resolution of the display device is small enough that the human visual system is unable to resolve further changes in physical resolution (i.e., the apparent resolution of the display becomes eye-limited). The second condition occurs when the measurement of the physical resolution of the display is performed for only the luminance channel but not performed for resolution of the color information while the display actually has a different resolution within each color channel.
Addressability in most flat-panel displays, especially active-matrix displays, is limited by the need to provide signal busses and electronic control elements in the display. Further, in EL displays, the electronic control elements can be required to share the area that is required for light emission. In these technologies, the more such busses and control elements that are needed, the less area in the display is available for actual light-emitting areas. Further, in such display devices, as the light-emitting area is decreased, the current density required across the EL stack to produce a desired luminance increases and this increase in current density is known to reduce the lifetime of the display device. Therefore, it is important to maintain as large a light-emitting area as possible. Regardless of whether the area required for patterning busses and control elements compete with the light-emitting area of the display, the decrease in bus and control element size that occur with increases in addressability for a given display generally require more accurate, and therefore more complex, manufacturing processes and can result in greater number of defective panels, decreasing yield rate and increasing the cost of marketable displays. Therefore, from a cost and manufacturing complexity point of view, it is generally desirable to provide a display with lower addressability. This desire is, of course, in conflict with the need to provide higher apparent resolution. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a display that has relatively low addessability but that also provides high apparent resolution.
It should also be noted that other important performance attributes of the EL display device may be influenced by arrangements of light-emitting elements; including the power of the display device and the peak current that any power line within an active matrix EL display needs to deliver to the light-emitting elements to which it provides power. For example, by including white light-emitting elements or broadband light-emitting elements, especially when employing color filters to form RGB light-emitting elements, the power consumption and the current requirements for a typical EL display device can be reduced significantly, as described in US2004/0113875 and US 2005/0212728, both entitled “Color OLED display with improved power efficiency”. The use of such arrangements of light-emitting elements can be employed with drive circuitry as described by U.S. Pat. No. 6,771,028, entitled “Drive circuitry for four-color organic light-emitting device” which discloses several simplified driving means for such arrangements of light-emitting elements. These include, for example, pairs of columns of light-emitting elements, each pair of columns containing four-colors of organic light-emitting devices which share a common electrical bus. The fact that pairs of columns of light-emitting elements share this electrical bus, reduces the area required for electrical bus structures by reducing the number of buses and therefore the area between electrical buses. It is also important to note that when such broad band light-emitting elements are employed, these light-emitting elements will emit light nearer the center of the human photopic sensitivity curve than red and blue light-emitting elements and will therefore be perceived as being high luminance light-emitting elements.
It has been known for many years that the human eye is more sensitive to luminance in a scene than to chrominance. In fact, current understanding of the human visual system includes the fact that processing is performed within or near the retina of the human eye that converts the signal that is generated by the photoreceptors into a luminance signal, a red/green chrominance difference signal and a blue/yellow chrominance difference signal. Each of these three signals have different resolution as depicted by the contrast threshold curves shown in
This difference in sensitivity is well appreciated within the imaging industry and has been employed to provide lower cost systems with high perceived quality within many domains, most notably digital camera sensors and image compression and transmission algorithms. For example, since green light provides the preponderance of luminance information in typical viewing environments because the human visual systems are significantly more sensitive to green light than to red or blue light, digital cameras typically employ two green sensitive elements for every red and blue sensitive element and interpolate intermediate luminance values for the missing colored elements within each color plane as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,971,065, entitled “Color imaging array”. In typical image compression and transmission algorithms, image signals are converted to a luminance/chrominance representation and the chrominance channels undergo significantly more compression than the luminance channel.
The relative sensitivities of the human eye to different color channels have recently been used in the liquid crystal display (LCD) art to produce displays having subpixels with broad band emission to increase perceived resolution. For example, US Patent Application 2005/0225574 and US Patent Application 2005/0225575, each entitled “Novel subpixel layouts and arrangements for high brightness displays” provide various subpixel arrangements such as the one shown in
The drive scheme for such a display is discussed in more detail within US Patent Application 2005/0225563, entitled “Subpixel rendering filters for high brightness subpixel layouts”. As this drive scheme was developed for use in LCD displays, the power consumption of the display is controlled primarily by the backlight brightness, and the addition of broad band subpixels (white, cyan, or yellow) only increase the output luminance of the display device when the light they transmit is used to augment (i.e., is added to) the light that is produced for the RGB subpixels. Therefore, the algorithms that are provided within US Patent Application 2005/0225563 utilizes all colors of subpixels within the display device as much as possible without producing excessive color errors during color rendering. This drive scheme is not desirable for use in an EL display employing a more efficient fourth emitter in combination with RGB emitters, where the maximum efficiency gains that can be achieved are arrived at by turning off the less efficient, narrow transmission band RGB light-emitting elements as much as possible.
More desirable methods for driving an EL displays have been discussed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,885,380 and 6,897,876, both entitled “Method for transforming three colors input signals to four or more output signals for a color display” to achieve higher display efficiency has been described. While these methods are analogous to the LCD methods discussed within US Patent Application 2005/0225563, they allow neutral content to be displayed using only the broadband light-emitting elements. If these algorithms designed for obtaining maximum power advantages were to be used together with arrangements of light-emitting elements as described in US Patent Application 2005/0225574 and US Patent Application 2005/0225575, the pixel patterns would not employ the green high-luminance light-emitting element to allow pairs of light-emitting elements to render a high-resolution image and therefore do not provide a method for achieving an optimal tradeoff between EL display power consumption and image quality. U.S. Pat. No. 6,897,876 describes a method for adjusting the use of light-emitting elements near edges within the image signal on a display employing in RGBW stripe patterns, however, an optimal method for using this algorithm in conjunction with pixel patterns such as illustrated in
It is also known to provide an EL display device having pixels with differently sized light-emitting elements, wherein the relative sizes of the elements in a pixel are selected to extend the service life of the display as discussed by U.S. Pat. No. 6,366,025, entitled “Electroluminescence display apparatus”. In particular larger areas of white emitting elements as described in US2004/0113875 may e desirable. Further, such a pixel arrangement would ideally minimize the peak current along an electrical bus within the EL display, increasing the practical aperture ratio of the display device and therefore extending the lifetime of the display device.
There is a need, therefore, for an improved apparatus and method for providing higher apparent resolution, with reduced power consumption and extended lifetime.
In accordance with one embodiment, the present invention is directed towards a full color electro-luminescent display system, comprising:
a display device comprised of a plurality of red, green, blue light-emitting elements and at least one additional color of light-emitting element having luminance efficiency greater than at least one of the red, green and blue light-emitting elements, each light-emitting element including a first electrode and a second electrode having one or more electro-luminescent layers formed there-between, at least one electro-luminescent layer being light-emitting, at least one of the electrodes being transparent and the first and second electrodes defining one or more light-emissive areas, wherein the light-emitting elements are laid out over a substrate in adjacent columns arranged along a first dimension and adjacent rows arranged along a second dimension, such that each pair of adjacent columns of light-emitting elements, and each row of light-emitting elements, contain each of the red, green, blue and additional color light-emitting elements; and
a controller for receiving an input signal for an input image having a two-dimensional spatial content including edge boundaries between first and second regions of the input image and driving the display, the controller being responsive to the two-dimensional spatial content of the input image whereby when the additional light-emitting elements are driven at different levels in the first and second regions of the input image, utilization of the light-emitting elements is adjusted such that the ratio of the sum of the luminance values of the red, green, blue light-emitting elements to the sum of the luminance values of the additional light-emitting elements along an edge boundary in at least one of the first and second regions is closer to one than the ratio of the sum of the luminance values of the red, green, blue light-emitting elements to the sum of the luminance values of the additional light-emitting elements within the interior of the at least one of the first and second regions within the displayed image, thereby increasing apparent display resolution while providing increased display power efficiency.
The advantages of various embodiment of this invention include providing a color display system device with improved apparent resolution, with reduced power consumption and/or extended lifetime.
Referring to
This arrangement of light-emitting elements allows a luminance pattern to be created such that a white line may be created which is one pair of columns or one row height in width, thereby increasing the potential for higher perceived resolution relative to pixel patterns not employing all colors in each row or pair of columns. However, to reduce the power consumption of the electro-luminescent display while delivering this higher perceived resolution, the display system must further be comprised of a controller for receiving an input signal for an input image having a two-dimensional spatial content (i.e., having edges in two or more relative orientations) and manipulating the input signal such that a four-or-more color signal is created to drive red, green, blue and the one or more additional light-emitting elements wherein the more efficient additional light-emitting elements are preferentially employed over the use of the red, green, and blue light-emitting elements at locations having a relatively low edge strength compared to the use of such light emitting elements at locations having a high edge strength. This may also be expressed as requiring that the ratio of the sum of the luminance values of the red, green, blue light-emitting elements to the sum of the luminance values of the additional light-emitting elements at spatial locations having a relatively high edge strength is closer to one than the ratio of the sum of the luminance values of the red, green, blue light-emitting elements to the sum of the luminance values of the additional light-emitting elements at spatial locations having relatively lower edge strength when provided on the display. Accordingly, when the input signal that is provided to represent an input image having a two-dimensional spatial content that includes edge boundaries between first and second regions is provided to the controller, and the additional light-emitting elements may be driven at different levels in the first and second regions of the input image, and utilization of the light-emitting elements is adjusted such that the ratio of the sum of the luminance values of the red, green, blue light-emitting elements to the sum of the luminance values of the additional light-emitting elements along an edge boundary in at least one of the first and second regions is closer to one than the ratio of the sum of the luminance values of the red, green, blue light-emitting elements to the sum of the luminance values of the additional light-emitting elements within the interior of the at least one of the first and second regions within the displayed image. By providing this control, the controller allows the higher efficiency additional light-emitting element to be utilized in place of the lower efficiency red, green, or blue light-emitting elements for much of the image. However, near high luminance edges, where spatial resolution is particularly necessary, the controller utilizes all of the light-emitting elements to deliver the potential for a higher perceived resolution that is provided by the arrangement of light-emitting elements within the display.
This display system can be particularly advantaged when the light-emitting elements are rectangular in shape, having a longer first dimension than the second dimension, and the input signal that is provided has an addressability (i.e., represents a number of spatial locations) that is larger than the number of full color repeat patterns within the display device. In such a display, the length of the light-emitting elements in the first dimension preferably will be at least 1.5 times the length of the light-emitting elements in the second dimension and the length of light-emitting elements. More preferably, the length of the light-emitting elements in the first dimension will be approximately 2 times the length of the light-emitting elements in the second dimension, and the addressability of the input signal will be equal to half the number of light-emitting elements along the second dimension and equal to the number of light-emitting elements in the first direction. Although the first or second dimension may be laid out to lie on the horizontal, vertical, or any other orientation with respect to the substrate, since there are twice as many light-emitting elements in the second dimension, providing light-emitting elements which have a first dimension that is 2 times their second dimension will provide approximately equal resolution along both dimensions. It might be further recognized that while this invention can be applied for many different display configurations, it will be most valuable for high resolution displays wherein the height of a row is smaller than about 2 minutes of visual angle when viewed by a human observer at the desired or anticipated viewing distance.
This display system can be particularly advantaged when the display device is comprised of an active matrix circuit wherein power is provided by an array of electrical busses since the display will have on the order of half as many light-emitting elements as a display having a conventional pixel layout and with a comparable resolution, and therefore will require substantially fewer active matrix drive circuits than a display of comparable resolution. Additional advantages will be obtained when one or more of the electrical busses provide current to each color of light-emitting elements within the display device. For example, within the full color device each column of a pair of columns of light-emitting elements may be arranged along each side of and may be supplied power by a single electrical buss. Alternatively, pairs of rows of light-emitting elements may be arranged along each side of and may be supplied power by a single electrical buss. This arrangement provides economies by allowing pairs of rows or columns of light-emitting elements, decreasing the number of electrical buses that are required and therefore the space that is required between each of these electrical busses and other patterned elements on the substrate.
In an even more preferred embodiment, the controller may be designed to drive the light-emitting elements of the display device in combination such that the total current requirements of the busses are reduced while the power busses provide power to every color of light-emitting element (i.e., either pairs of columns, individual rows, or pairs of rows). This may be accomplished by controlling the light emissive elements such that the luminance produced by at least one of the light-emitting elements, when all colors of light-emitting elements are employed simultaneously, is lower than the luminance that is produced by the same light-emitting element when the color of light that is being displayed is approximately equal to the color of the light-emitting element. When the light-emitting element is a white light-emitting element, this drive scheme reduces the peak current that each buss is required to provide to a peak current that is on the order of the peak current required to drive two of the four light-emitting elements, reducing the area of the required buss by a factor of a one half and providing room for additional electronics and/or increased area for the light-emitting element. In a bottom-emitting display device, i.e., a device that emits light through the substrate, this embodiment preferably allows the light-emitting area to be increased, thereby lowering the required current density to the light-emitting materials and increasing the lifetime of the display device. Although the at least one additional light-emitting element may be comprised of any color of light-emitting element that has a higher efficiency than at least one of the red, green, or blue light-emitting elements, it will typically preferably be chosen from among white, cyan, yellow, or magenta light-emitting elements.
A detailed embodiment of a portion of a display device useful in practicing this invention is shown in
While
Another configuration of the drive circuitry, which is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,550,066, connects the capacitor 86 directly to the power buss 90 instead of a separate capacitor line. A variation in U.S. Pat. No. 6,476,419 uses two capacitors disposed directly over one and another, wherein the first capacitor is fabricated between a semiconductor layer and a gate conductor layer that forms conductor for the gate of one of the TFTs, and the second capacitor is fabricated between the gate conductor layer and a second conductor layer that forms the power buss 90 and data lines 80.
While the drive circuitry described herein requires a select transistor 84 and a power transistor 88, several variations of these transistor designs are known in the art. For example, single- and multi-gate versions of transistors are known and have been applied to select transistors in prior art. A single-gate transistor includes a gate, a source and a drain. An example of the use of a single-gate type of transistor for the select transistor is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,429,599. A multi-gate transistor includes at least two gates electrically connected together and therefore a source, a drain, and at least one intermediate source-drain between the gates. An example of the use of a multi-gate type of transistor for the select transistor is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,476,419. This type of transistor can be represented in a circuit schematic by a single transistor or by two or more transistors in series in which the gates are connected and the source of one transistor is connected directly to the drain of the next transistor. While the performance of these designs can differ, both types of transistors serve the same function in the circuit and either type can be applied to the present invention by those skilled in the art. The example of the preferred embodiment of the present invention is shown with a multi-gate type select transistor 84.
Also known in the art is the use multiple parallel transistors, which are typically applied to the power transistor 88. Multiple parallel transistors are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,501,448. Multiple parallel transistors consist of two or more transistors in which their sources are connected together, their drains are connected together, and their gates are connected together. The multiple transistors are separated within the light-emitting elements so as to provide multiple parallel paths for current flow. The use of multiple parallel transistors has the advantage of providing robustness against variability and defects in the semiconductor layer manufacturing process. While the power transistors described in the various embodiments of the present invention are shown as single transistors, multiple parallel transistors can be used by those skilled in the art and are understood to be within the spirit of the invention.
Above the substrate 112, a first semiconductor layer is provided, from which semiconductor region 94 is formed. Above semiconductor region 94, first dielectric layer 114 is formed and patterned by methods such as photolithography and etching. This dielectric layer is preferably silicon dioxide, silicon nitride, or a combination thereof. It may also be formed from several sub-layers of dielectric material. Above first dielectric layer 114, a first conductor layer is provided, from which power transistor gate 108 is formed and patterned by methods such as photolithography and etching. This conductor layer can be, for example, a metal such as Cr, as is known in the art. Above power transistor gate 108, a second dielectric layer 116 is formed. This dielectric layer can be, for example, silicon dioxide, silicon nitride, or a combination thereof. Above second dielectric layer 116, a second conductor layer is provided, from which power buss 90 and data line 80 are formed and patterned by methods such as photolithography and etching. This conductor layer can be, for example, a metal such as an Al alloy as is known in the art. Power buss 90 makes electrical contact with semiconductor region 92 through a via opened in the dielectric layers. Over the second conductor layer, a third dielectric layer 118 is formed.
Above the third dielectric layer, a first electrode 96 is formed. First electrode 96 is preferably highly transparent for the case of a bottom-emitting configuration and may be constructed of a material such as ITO. Above first electrode 96, an inter-subpixel dielectric 120 layer, such as is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,246,179, is preferably used to cover the edges of the first electrodes in order to prevent shorts or strong electric fields in this area. While use of the inter-subpixel dielectric 120 layer is preferred, it is not required for successful implementation of the present invention. The area of the first electrode 96 not covered by inter-subpixel dielectric 120 constitutes the light-emitting area.
Each of the light-emitting elements further includes an EL media 110. There are numerous configurations of the EL media 110 layers wherein the present invention can be successfully practiced. For example, the EL media may be an organic EL media. For the organic EL media, a broadband or white light source, which emits light at the wavelengths used by all the light-emitting elements, may be used to avoid the need for patterning the organic EL media between light-emitting elements. In this case, color filters (not shown) may be provided for some of the light-emitting elements in the path of the light to produce the desired light colors from the white or broadband emission for a multi-color display. It should be noted that in this configuration, the filters applied to the red, green, and blue light-emitting elements will typically absorb more light than broader bandwidth filters that can be used to form cyan, yellow, or magenta light-emitting elements and certainly will absorb more light than would be absorbed in the absence of a filter. Therefore, in these configurations, it is highly likely that the additional light-emitting elements will have efficiencies that are greater than at least one, if not all three, of the red, green, and blue light-emitting elements. Some examples of organic EL media layers that emit broadband or white light are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,696,177B1. However, the present invention can also be made to work where each light-emitting elements has one or more of the organic EL media layers separately patterned for each light-emitting elements to emit differing colors for specific light-emitting elements. The EL media 110 may be constructed of several organic layers such as; a hole injecting layer 122, a hole transporting layer 124 that is disposed over the hole injecting layer 122, a light-emitting layer 126 disposed over the hole transporting layer 124, and an electron transporting layer 128 disposed over the light-emitting layer 126. Alternate constructions of the organic EL media 110 having fewer or more layers can also be used to successfully practice the present invention. These organic EL media layers are typically comprised of organic materials, either small molecule or polymer materials, as is known in the art. These organic EL media layers can be deposited by several methods known in the art such as, for example, thermal evaporation in a vacuum chamber, laser transfer from a donor substrate, or deposition from a solvent by use of an ink jet print apparatus.
Above the EL media 110, a second electrode 130 is formed. For a bottom emitting device, this electrode is preferably highly reflective and may be composed of a metal such as aluminum or silver or magnesium silver alloy. The second electrode may also comprise an electron injecting layer (not shown) composed of a material such as lithium to aid in the injection of electrons. When stimulated by an electrical current between first electrode 96 and second electrode 130, the organic EL media 110 produces light emission 132.
Most OLED devices are sensitive to moisture or oxygen, or both, so they are commonly sealed in an inert atmosphere such as nitrogen or argon, along with a desiccant such as alumina, bauxite, calcium sulfate, clays, silica gel, zeolites, alkaline metal oxides, alkaline earth metal oxides, sulfates, or metal halides and perchlorates. Methods for encapsulation and desiccation include, but are not limited to, those described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,226,890. In addition, barrier layers such as SiOx, Teflon, and alternating inorganic/polymeric layers are known in the art for encapsulation.
EL devices of this invention can employ various well-known optical effects in order to enhance the displays properties if desired. This includes but is not limited to optimizing layer thicknesses to yield maximum light transmission, providing dielectric mirror structures, replacing reflective electrodes with light-absorbing electrodes, providing light scattering layers to enhance light extraction, providing anti-glare or anti-reflection coatings over the display, providing a polarizing media over the display, or providing colored, neutral density, or color conversion filters over the display.
The current invention requires that a display such as described in
Although, the controller 140 may utilize many different processes to achieve the present invention, this controller will preferably perform the steps as shown in
Once the intermediate metric has been computed 154, two-dimensional filtering operations are performed given the current spatial location that is being operated on and at least one of its neighbors in the horizontal or vertical direction to compute 156 the two-dimensional edge strength of the intermediate signal. Although this may be accomplished through a number of means, one desirable method is to compute the ratio of a high pass filtered version of this intermediate signal to a low pass filtered version of the intermediate signal over a two-dimensional area. For example, given the intermediate value p(i,j), which represents the value of the intermediate signal at column i and row j within the image, this two-dimensional signal may be computed as:
where f(i, j) represents the two-dimensional edge strength, the numerator represents the high pass filter and the denominator represents the low pass filter and the factor 1/9 normalizes the resulting values between 0 and 1.
Once the two-dimensional edge strength is computed 156, this edge strength is used to convert 158 the three color input signal to a four-or-more color signal. This computation will typically involve the subtraction of a proportion of energy from the three color input signal and addition of this energy to the one or more additional color channels such that a larger proportion of this energy is moved to the additional color channels when the edge strength is low than when the edge strength is high. As a specific example, returning to step 154, recall that the input three color signal RGB values were converted to linear intensity and then these linear intensity values were normalized to the color of the additional light-emitting element. Returning to these normalized linear intensity values, and the minimum of these values that were computed in step 154, we may compute the normalized output RGB values as
Rn(i,j)=Ri(i,j)−a(i,j)*min(Ri(i,j),Gi(i,j),Bi(i,j)), (eqn. 1)
Gn(i,j)=Gi(i,j)−a(i,j)*min(Ri(i,j),Gi(i,j),Bi(i,j)), (eqn. 2)
Bn(i,j)=Bi(i,j)−a(i,j)*min(Ri(i,j),Gi(i,j),Bi(i,j)) (eqn. 3)
where Rn(i,j), Gn(i,j), Bn(i,j) represent the normalized output values, the values Ri(i,j), Gi(i,j), and Bi(i,j) represent the normalized linear intensity values that were computed from the input signal, and min(Ri(i,j), Gi(i,j), Bi(i,j)) represents the minimum of the normalized linear intensity values. The signal for the additional color channel is then computed as:
Wn(i,j)=b(i,j)*min(Ri(i,j),Gi(i,j),Bi(i,j)) (eqn. 4)
where Wn(i,j) is the normalized signal for the additional color channel. Note that each of these equations contain the values a(i,j) or b(i,j). In the current embodiment of the present invention a(i,j) and b(i,j) are not constants but instead are functions of the two-dimensional edge strength f(i,j). A simple function that can be employed with success is to compute a(i,j) and b(i,j) as 0.5*(1−f(i,j)). Using this calculation, a white light-emitting element on a black and white edge produce about half the luminance while on the bright side of the edge while the R, G, and B light-emitting elements will produce the remainder. Note that to maintain color accuracy a(i,j) and b(i,j) will be equal but this is not necessary and, in fact, under some circumstances it may be desirable for b(i,j) to have a higher slope than a(i,j). Within this particular implementation, when presenting flat white areas within the scene, the white light-emitting element will produce all of the luminance but the red, green, and blue light-emitting elements will be activated near edge boundaries, even when rendering a black and white scene. Modifications to this process may be made, one such modification is to filter or smooth the edge strength f(i,j) before computing the values of a(i,j) or b(i,j). Finally the weighting of the RGB signals may be modified to normalize them to the white point of the display, thus completing the conversion of the three color input signal to the more than three color signal. If there are more than four colors of light-emitting elements, other modifications may be made to this image processing path. In one implementation, each additional light-emitting element is added to the path one at a time. A step is added between each iteration of the conversion wherein it is determined where in color space each additional light-emitting element lies with respect to the light-emitting elements for which a signal has been computed. Generally, the location of this element will lie within one of the resulting triangles (i.e., subgamuts) formed by the previously added additional light-emitting elements and two of the red, green, and blue light-emitting elements, in subsequent cycles, the three light-emitting elements whose colors define the subgamut in which the additional light-emitting element lies are used in place of the RGB input signals. This process was also described in more detail within U.S. Pat. No. 6,885,380.
It might be noted that one important aspect of the conversion equations 1 through 4 is that luminance is subtracted from the red, green, and blue normalized linear intensity values when forming the information for the one or more light emitting elements and that the value of b(i,j) is not significantly larger than a(i,j) as this has the implication all of the light emitting elements will not be driven to their peak luminance simultaneously, and, therefore, the current that must be provided by any power buss that provides energy to all colors of light emitting elements is less than the peak current that would be provided if all four light-emitting elements were simultaneously driven to their maximum values. Therefore, a controller employing these equations will drive the light-emitting elements of the display device in combination to reduce the total instantaneous current requirements of the busses by controlling the light emissive elements such that the luminance produced by at least one of the light-emitting elements, when all colors of light-emitting elements are employed simultaneously, is lower than the luminance that is produced by the same light-emitting element when the color of light that is being displayed is approximately equal to the color of the light-emitting element. This behavior reduces the peak current that each buss is required to provide, thereby decreasing the required size of the buss and reducing the area required for drive electronics. In a bottom emitting display device, this increases the area available for light emission and in a top emitting display device, this can allow the designer to increase the addressability of the display device.
Once the four-or-more color signal has been formed 158, it is then necessary to determine the output values to drive the display. However, because the arrangement of light-emitting elements on the display varies as a function of spatial location, an input map of the light-emitting elements must be input 160. This map is used to determine 162 the color of light-emitting elements for each addressable data point within the converted four-or-more color image signal. Once the colors of the light-emitting elements are determined 162, the converted four-or-more color signal is down converted 164 to the array of light-emitting elements on the display. For example, referring again to
Where Go(i,j) represents the down converted green value for the light-emitting elements at (i,j) where i represents the number of light-emitting elements from the top of the display, j represents the number of rows of light-emitting elements divided by 2 and G(i,j) represents the converted more than color image signal at input addressable element location (i,j).
A fully digital converter would perform this digital down conversion in total. However, the controller may also have analog outputs. In such systems, while down conversion would typically be performed along both dimensions, the down conversion must only be performed in the vertical direction. Horizontal down conversion will be accomplished as the timing controller selects the voltage in the analog signal to be loaded onto the data line 80 of the display device.
As noted earlier, when such a controller is used in conjunction with a display of the present invention, the controller will receive an input signal for an input image having a two-dimensional spatial content including edge boundaries between first and second regions of the input image and driving the display and then being responsive to the two-dimensional spatial content of the input image, the controller will render the input image signal such that when the additional light-emitting elements are driven at different levels in the first and second regions of the input image, utilization of the light-emitting elements is adjusted such that the ratio of the sum of the luminance values of the red, green, blue light-emitting elements to the sum of the luminance values of the additional light-emitting elements along an edge boundary in at least one of the first and second regions is closer to one than the ratio of the sum of the luminance values of the red, green, blue light-emitting elements to the sum of the luminance values of the additional light-emitting elements within the interior of at least one of the first and second regions within the displayed image. This is depicted in
Although this disclosure provides an overview of the current invention, many modifications may be made that are within the scope of this invention. For example, there are many other arrangements of light-emitting elements for which this invention may be applied.
Although this disclosure has been primarily described in detail with particular reference to OLED displays, it will be understood that the same technology can be applied to any electro-luminescent display device that produces light as a function of the current provided to the light-emitting elements of the display. For example, this disclosure may apply to electro-luminescent display devices employing coatable inorganic materials, such as described by Mattoussi et al. in the paper entitled “Electroluminescence from heterostructures of poly(phenylene vinylene) and inorganic CdSe nanocrystals” as described in the Journal of Applied Physics Vol. 83, No. 12 on Jun. 15, 1998, or to displays formed from other combinations of organic and inorganic materials which exhibit electro-luminescence.
The invention has been described in detail with particular reference to certain preferred embodiments thereof, but it will be understood that variations and modifications can be effected within the spirit and scope of the invention.