This relates generally to electronic devices, and more particularly, to electronic devices with displays.
Electronic devices often include displays. For example, cellular telephones and portable computers often include displays for presenting information to a user.
Liquid crystal displays contain a layer of liquid crystal material. Pixels in a liquid crystal display contain thin-film transistors and pixel electrodes for applying electric fields to the liquid crystal material. The strength of the electric field in a pixel controls the polarization state of the liquid crystal material and thereby adjusts the brightness of the pixel.
There is a potential for ions in a liquid crystal display to move in response to applied electric fields. This can lead to charge accumulation on the pixels. Another cause of charge accumulation is dielectric polarization. Charge accumulation effects can produce visible artifacts on a display such as undesired flickering.
To minimize charge accumulation in a liquid crystal display, the polarity of the electric field applied to the pixels may be periodically reversed. For example, alternating positive polarity and negative polarity frames of image data may be displayed on the pixels of a liquid crystal display to prevent excess positive or negative charge accumulation. Although periodic polarity reversal can help reduce charge accumulation, charge accumulation issues may still arise in liquid crystal displays. Charge accumulation may arise, for example, in situations in which a software application or other content generator creates negative and positive frames of image data with unbalanced gray levels. The risk of undesired charge accumulation may be exacerbated in displays with a variable refresh rate.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide displays with enhanced charge accumulation mitigation capabilities.
An electronic device may generate content that is to be displayed on a display. The display may be a liquid crystal display have an array of liquid crystal display pixels. Display driver circuitry in the display may display image frames on the array of pixels. The image frames may be displayed with positive and negative polarities to help reduce charge accumulation effects.
A charge accumulation tracker may analyze the image frames to determine when there is a risk of excess charge accumulation. The charge accumulation tracker may use information on gray levels in the displayed image frames, frame duration information, and frame polarity information as inputs. The charge accumulation tracker may compute a charge accumulation metric based on the gray levels, frame duration, and frame polarity. Weights that are retrieved from a look-up table or that are represented using a mathematical expression may be applied to the inputs of the charge accumulation tracker. For example, the charge accumulation tracker may apply weights to the inputs that vary as a function of gray level, image frame duration, and polarity.
The charge accumulation tracker may compute the charge accumulation metric for entire image frames or may process subregions of each frame separately. When subregions are processed separately, each subregion may be individually monitored for a risk of excess charge accumulation by comparing a charge accumulation metric for that subregion to a threshold.
Electronic devices may include displays. The displays may be used to display images to a user. Illustrative electronic devices that may be provided with displays are shown in
The illustrative configurations for device 10 that are shown in
Housing 12 of device 10, which is sometimes referred to as a case, may be formed of materials such as plastic, glass, ceramics, carbon-fiber composites and other fiber-based composites, metal (e.g., machined aluminum, stainless steel, or other metals), other materials, or a combination of these materials. Device 10 may be formed using a unibody construction in which most or all of housing 12 is formed from a single structural element (e.g., a piece of machined metal or a piece of molded plastic) or may be formed from multiple housing structures (e.g., outer housing structures that have been mounted to internal frame elements or other internal housing structures).
Display 14 may be a touch sensitive display that includes a touch sensor or may be insensitive to touch. Touch sensors for display 14 may be formed from an array of capacitive touch sensor electrodes, a resistive touch array, touch sensor structures based on acoustic touch, optical touch, or force-based touch technologies, or other suitable touch sensor components.
Display 14 for device 10 may include pixels formed from liquid crystal display (LCD) components. A display cover layer may cover the surface of display 14 or a display layer such as a color filter layer or other portion of a display may be used as the outermost (or nearly outermost) layer in display 14. The outermost display layer may be formed from a transparent glass sheet, a clear plastic layer, or other transparent member.
A cross-sectional side view of an illustrative configuration for display 14 of device 10 (e.g., for display 14 of the devices of
Display layers 46 may be mounted in chassis structures such as a plastic chassis structure and/or a metal chassis structure to form a display module for mounting in housing 12 or display layers 46 may be mounted directly in housing 12 (e.g., by stacking display layers 46 into a recessed portion in housing 12). Display layers 46 may form a liquid crystal display or may be used in forming displays of other types.
Display layers 46 may include a liquid crystal layer such a liquid crystal layer 52. Liquid crystal layer 52 may be sandwiched between display layers such as display layers 58 and 56. Layers 56 and 58 may be interposed between lower polarizer layer 60 and upper polarizer layer 54.
Layers 58 and 56 may be formed from transparent substrate layers such as clear layers of glass or plastic. Layers 58 and 56 may be layers such as a thin-film transistor layer and/or a color filter layer. Conductive traces, color filter elements, transistors, and other circuits and structures may be formed on the substrates of layers 58 and 56 (e.g., to form a thin-film transistor layer and/or a color filter layer). Touch sensor electrodes may also be incorporated into layers such as layers 58 and 56 and/or touch sensor electrodes may be formed on other substrates.
With one illustrative configuration, layer 58 may be a thin-film transistor layer that includes an array of pixel circuits based on thin-film transistors and associated electrodes (pixel electrodes) for applying electric fields to liquid crystal layer 52 and thereby displaying images on display 14. Layer 56 may be a color filter layer that includes an array of color filter elements for providing display 14 with the ability to display color images. If desired, layer 58 may be a color filter layer and layer 56 may be a thin-film transistor layer. Configurations in which color filter elements are combined with thin-film transistor structures on a common substrate layer in the upper or lower portion of display 14 may also be used.
During operation of display 14 in device 10, control circuitry (e.g., one or more integrated circuits on a printed circuit) may be used to generate information to be displayed on display 14 (e.g., display data). The information to be displayed may be conveyed to a display driver integrated circuit such as circuit 62A or 62B using a signal path such as a signal path formed from conductive metal traces in a rigid or flexible printed circuit such as printed circuit 64 (as an example).
Backlight structures 42 may include a light guide plate such as light guide plate 78. Light guide plate 78 may be formed from a transparent material such as clear glass or plastic. During operation of backlight structures 42, a light source such as light source 72 may generate light 74. Light source 72 may be, for example, an array of light-emitting diodes.
Light 74 from light source 72 may be coupled into edge surface 76 of light guide plate 78 and may be distributed in dimensions X and Y throughout light guide plate 78 due to the principal of total internal reflection. Light guide plate 78 may include light-scattering features such as pits or bumps. The light-scattering features may be located on an upper surface and/or on an opposing lower surface of light guide plate 78. Light source 72 may be located at the left of light guide plate 78 as shown in
Light 74 that scatters upwards in direction Z from light guide plate 78 may serve as backlight 44 for display 14. Light 74 that scatters downwards may be reflected back in the upwards direction by reflector 80. Reflector 80 may be formed from a reflective material such as a layer of plastic covered with a dielectric mirror thin-film coating.
To enhance backlight performance for backlight structures 42, backlight structures 42 may include optical films 70. Optical films 70 may include diffuser layers for helping to homogenize backlight 44 and thereby reduce hotspots, compensation films for enhancing off-axis viewing, and brightness enhancement films (also sometimes referred to as turning films) for collimating backlight 44. Optical films 70 may overlap the other structures in backlight unit 42 such as light guide plate 78 and reflector 80. For example, if light guide plate 78 has a rectangular footprint in the X-Y plane of
As shown in
During operation of device 10, control circuitry in device 10 such as memory circuits, microprocessors, and other storage and processing circuitry may provide data to the display driver circuitry. The display driver circuitry may convert the data into signals for controlling pixels 90 of pixel array 92.
Pixel array 92 may contain rows and columns of pixels 90. The circuitry of pixel array 92 (i.e., the rows and columns of pixel circuits for pixels 90) may be controlled using signals such as data line signals on data lines D and gate line signals on gate lines G. Data lines D and gate lines G are orthogonal. For example, data lines D may extend vertically and gate lines G may extend horizontally (i.e., perpendicular to data lines D).
Pixels 90 in pixel array 92 may contain thin-film transistor circuitry (e.g., polysilicon transistor circuitry, amorphous silicon transistor circuitry, semiconducting-oxide transistor circuitry such as InGaZnO transistor circuitry, other silicon or semiconducting-oxide transistor circuitry, etc.) and associated structures for producing electric fields across liquid crystal layer 52 in display 14. Each liquid crystal display pixel may have one or more thin-film transistors. For example, each pixel may have a respective thin-film transistor such as thin-film transistor 94 to control the application of electric fields to a respective pixel-sized portion 52′ of liquid crystal layer 52.
The thin-film transistor structures that are used in forming pixels 90 may be located on a thin-film transistor substrate such as a layer of glass. The thin-film transistor substrate and the structures of display pixels 90 that are formed on the surface of the thin-film transistor substrate collectively form thin-film transistor layer 58 (
Gate driver circuitry may be used to generate gate signals on gate lines G. The gate driver circuitry may be formed from thin-film transistors on the thin-film transistor layer or may be implemented in separate integrated circuits. The data line signals on data lines D in pixel array 92 carry analog image data (e.g., voltages with magnitudes representing pixel brightness levels). During the process of displaying images on display 14, a display driver integrated circuit or other circuitry may receive digital data from control circuitry and may produce corresponding analog data signals. The analog data signals may be demultiplexed and provided to data lines D.
The data line signals on data lines D are distributed to the columns of display pixels 90 in pixel array 92. Gate line signals on gate lines G are provided to the rows of pixels 90 in pixel array 92 by associated gate driver circuitry.
The circuitry of display 14 may be formed from conductive structures (e.g., metal lines and/or structures formed from transparent conductive materials such as indium tin oxide) and may include transistors such as transistor 94 of
As shown in
Pixel 90 may have a signal storage element such as capacitor 102 or other charge storage elements. Storage capacitor 102 may be used to help store signal Vp in pixel 90 between frames (i.e., in the period of time between the assertion of successive gate signals).
Display 14 may have a common electrode coupled to node 104. The common electrode (which is sometimes referred to as the common voltage electrode, Vcom electrode, or Vcom terminal) may be used to distribute a common electrode voltage such as common electrode voltage Vcom to nodes such as node 104 in each pixel 90 of array 92. As shown by illustrative electrode pattern 104′ of
In each pixel 90, capacitor 102 may be coupled between nodes 100 and 104. A parallel capacitance arises across nodes 100 and 104 due to electrode structures in pixel 90 that are used in controlling the electric field through the liquid crystal material of the pixel (liquid crystal material 52′). As shown in
The electric field that is produced across liquid crystal material 52′ causes a change in the orientations of the liquid crystals in liquid crystal material 52′. This changes the polarization of light passing through liquid crystal material 52′. The change in polarization may, in conjunction with polarizers 60 and 54 of
Charge accumulation issues may arise from repeated application of electric fields across liquid crystal material 52′ using applied voltages Vp−Vcom of a single polarity. Accordingly, the polarity of the electric field may be periodically alternated. As an example, in odd frames a positive voltage Vp−Vcom may be applied across material 52′, whereas in even frames a negative voltage Vp−Vcom may be applied across material 52′. To ensure that charge accumulation effects are not present (even when periodically reversing the polarity of the image frames), device 10 can incorporate charge accumulation monitoring functionality. For example, a charge accumulation tracker can be implemented in device 10 that monitors display 14 for excessive charge accumulation conditions. If suitable criteria are satisfied (i.e., if a calculated charge accumulation level exceeds a predetermined charge accumulation threshold for all or part of display 14), appropriate remedial actions may be taken.
Charge accumulation effects arise when non-black content is displayed. Black content and other content with low gray levels does not involve application of large electric fields to display 14 and therefore does not give rise to significant charge accumulation. Content with large gray levels (e.g., white content), however, is associated with large electric fields across layer 52 and therefore has the potential to lead to charge accumulation. In addition to being dependent on the gray level of displayed image frames, charge accumulation effects are also dependent on the amount of time that white content (high gray level content) is displayed for each polarity.
Charge accumulation can become excessive when the images that are displayed on display 14 do not contain content that is evenly divided between positive and negative frames. For example, excessive charge accumulation conditions may arise when more white content is displayed during positive frames than during negative frames. The likelihood that excessive charge accumulation conditions will arise may be exacerbated in displays that implement variable refresh rate schemes. With a variable refresh rate scheme, display 14 is sometimes operated with a relatively high frame rate and is sometimes operated with a relatively low frame rate. The high frame rate may be used to display rapidly moving content. The low frame rate may be used to conserve power when content is changing less rapidly.
A graph in which frame rate FR has been plotted as a function of time in an illustrative configuration in which display 14 has variable refresh rate capabilities is shown in
The reduced frame rates that are involved in operating a display with variable refresh rate capabilities are associated with frames of potentially long duration (e.g., 1 s, etc.). Particularly in scenarios in which display 14 is operating with long frames, there is a potential for an undesirable interplay between the pattern of content being displayed on display 14 and the polarities of the frames that can lead to excessive charge accumulation.
To ensure that device 10 and display 14 operate satisfactorily, a charge accumulation tracker may be implemented that monitors for the occurrence of conditions that are likely associated with excess charge accumulation. When charge accumulation is detected, remedial actions may be taken. For example, in a display with variable refresh rate capabilities, variable refresh operations can be suspended (e.g., by returning device 10 to high refresh rate FRH for a given period of time or by at least elevating the frame rate for display 14 above desired low rate FRL for a given period of time). As another example, the polarity of the frames of image data being displayed on display 14 can be flipped (e.g., by inserting an extra positive frame between a positive frame and a negative frame).
The charge accumulation tracker can be spatially sensitive. For example, display 14 may be divided into multiple subregions (e.g., rectangular blocks), each of which may be monitored separately to determine whether excessive charge accumulation is present. The charge accumulation tracker may also take into account the gray level of displayed content, weighting higher gray levels (whiter content) more heavily than lower gray levels (darker content). The duration of positive and negative frames (which affects how long the content is displayed with each polarity) can also be taken into account. Based on these inputs and/or other information, the charge accumulation tracker may determine whether or not remedial actions are required.
If desired, the charge accumulation tracker may determine the average gray level for each frame (i.e., the charge accumulation tracker in this type of arrangement will not divide display 14 into an array of smaller blocks and will therefore not be spatially sensitive). The average gray level in each frame may be, for example, the mean gray level of the pixels in the frame or may be the median gray level of the pixels in the frame. Scenarios in which the charge accumulation tracker uses a fixed estimation of the average gray level of each frame (e.g., by assuming that frames include a worst-case gray level of 255 or include an average gray level of 127 or other suitable fixed value) may also be used by the charge accumulation tracker. Weighting factors may be applied to the computed average gray level to help determine an appropriate charge accumulation metric (which can then be compared against a predetermined threshold to determine whether charge accumulation is excessive and requires remediation). As an example, gray level weighting may be used to weight frames with higher average gray levels more heavily than frames with lower average gray levels and/or time-based weighting may be used to weight positive and negative frames by their respective durations (in addition to taking into account their average gray levels).
Consider, as an example, the scenario of
As shown in
In the
Control circuitry 110 may include a graphics processing unit such as graphics processing unit 116. Graphics processing unit 116 may receive image frames for frame buffer 120 (e.g., frame buffer 120A) from content generator 114. Content generator 114 may be an application running on control circuitry 110 such as a game, a media playback application, an application that presents text to a user, an operating system function, or other code running on control circuitry 110 that generates image data to be displayed on display 14.
Control circuitry 110 may be coupled to input-output circuitry such as input-output devices 112. Input-output devices 112 may be used to allow data to be supplied to device 10 and to allow data to be provided from device 10 to external devices. Input-output devices 112 may include buttons, joysticks, scrolling wheels, touch pads, key pads, keyboards, microphones, speakers, tone generators, vibrators, cameras, sensors, light-emitting diodes and other status indicators, data ports, etc. A user can control the operation of device 10 by supplying commands through input-output devices 112 and may receive status information and other output from device 10 using the output resources of input-output devices 112.
Control circuitry 110 may be used to run software on device 10 such as operating system code and applications. During operation of device 10, the software running on control circuitry 110 (e.g., content generator 114) may display images on display 14 using pixels 90 of pixel array 92. Display 14 may include display driver circuitry such as display driver circuitry 122 (see, e.g., circuitry 62A and 62B of
Image frames to be displayed on array 92 by the display driver circuitry may be stored in frame buffer 120 (e.g., frame buffer 120B). Charge accumulation tracker 118 may be implemented using resources in graphics processing unit 116 (see, e.g., charge accumulation tracker 18A) and/or using resources in display driver circuitry of display 14 (see, e.g., charge accumulation tracker 118B). Charge accumulation tracker 118 may use information on frame durations (e.g., the durations for which image frames in frame buffer circuitry 120 are displayed on array 92) in evaluating the values of charge accumulation metrics for the image frames displayed on the pixels of display 14. In arrangements in which frame duration information is not available in graphics processing unit 116, frame duration information may be provided by display driver circuitry 122 (e.g., charge accumulation tracker 118 may be implemented on circuitry 122 as illustrated by tracker 118B of
When subregions of each image frame are evaluated, charge accumulation scenarios that affect only a portion of display 14 can be detected. If, for example, a small portion of display 14 is white for all positive frames and black for all negative frames, whereas the remainder of the display has a relatively constant low gray level across positive and negative frames, there is a risk that a global gray level evaluation technique of the type described in connection with computation of the global COUNT value of
When using charge accumulation tracker 118 to evaluate charge accumulation risk in subregions of display 14 (or for entire image frames), the charge accumulation tracker may use look-up tables or mathematical equations to apply weighting functions to inputs such as measured average gray level and image frame duration. Curve 126 of the graph of
The operation of a display with a configuration in which charge accumulation tracker 118 evaluates image frames on a block-by-block basis (i.e., in which charge accumulation tracker 118 is a block-based charge accumulation tracker) is illustrated in
Frame FA is a positive frame, so charge accumulation parameters C1, C2, C3, and C4 acquire the values of the gray levels in blocks B1, B2, B3, and B4, respectively. Frame FB is a negative frame, so the value of B1 in frame FB is subtracted from C1 of frame FA, etc. The gray levels of each block in frame FC likewise are added to the respective parameters C1, C2, C3, and C4 and the gray levels of each block in frame FD are subtracted from parameters C1, C2, C3, and C4. As content is being provided to display 14 from content generator 114, there is a potential for the gray levels of blocks B1, B2, B3, and B4 to vary significantly between frames in a pattern that gives rise to charge accumulation in at least one of the blocks. This is illustrated by positive frame FE, in which the value of the charge accumulation metric C3 that has been computed by charge accumulation tracker 118 for block B3 in frame FE exceeds threshold TH. When charge accumulation tracker 118 produces a charge accumulation parameter value for a given one of the blocks that exceeds threshold TH, charge accumulation tracker 118 can conclude that there is a risk of excessive charge accumulation for at least that one subregion of display 14 and can take appropriate remedial action.
A flow chart of illustrative operations involved in using charge accumulation tracker 118 to monitor for the occurrence of charge accumulation conditions in display 14 is shown in
At step 130, as content generator 114 provides charge accumulation tracker 118 with image data to display on array 92 of display 14 (e.g., as image frames are provided to the frame buffer circuitry), charge accumulation tracker 118 computes the value of a charge accumulation metric (e.g., C1 . . . C4, etc.) for each subregion of interest in display 14. There may be any suitable number of regions of display 14 that are evaluated by tracker 118 (e.g., one region, two regions, four or more regions, 10 or more regions, 10-100 regions, 100-10000 regions, fewer than 1000 regions, fewer than 100 regions, or other suitable number of subregions). In computing the charge accumulation metric values, tracker 118 may use data stored in look-up tables or other stored data such as weighting data (based on gray level, duration, polarity, etc.) and/or may use mathematical weighting functions to weight raw image data. The computed charge accumulation metric value in each subregion may be compared to a suitable threshold value to determine whether there is a risk of excessive charge accumulation in that subregion.
So long as the computed charge accumulation values do not exceed the charge accumulation threshold, no remedial actions need be taken and processing may loop back to step 130 so that charge accumulation tracker 118 can continue to evaluate the frames of image data being displayed on display 14.
If the charge accumulation threshold is exceeded by the charge accumulation metric that has been computed for any of the subregions of display 14, tracker 118 can initiate appropriate remedial actions (step 134). Processing may then loop back to step 130, as indicated by line 136.
The remedial actions that are performed at step 134 may be performed using graphics processing unit 116 and/or display driver circuitry such as display driver circuitry 122. These actions may include, for example, temporarily suspending variable refresh rate operations (e.g., by restoring the frame rate of display 14 to a relatively high rate such as 30 Hz or 60 Hz or other non-reduced refresh rate rather than allowing a reduced rate of 1-10 Hz to be used), flipping the polarity of the image frames being displayed (e.g., by changing from a scheme in which odd frames are positive and even frames are negative to a scheme in which odd frames are negative and even frames are positive), lengthening the duration of a particular frame (e.g., a positive frame when more positive polarity operations are needed to reduce charge accumulation, etc.), by inserting a remedial frame with a duration and polarity that reduces charge accumulation, or other suitable actions.
The foregoing is merely illustrative and various modifications can be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the described embodiments. The foregoing embodiments may be implemented individually or in any combination.
This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/890,517, filed Feb. 7, 2018, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/722,620, filed May 27, 2015, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,922,608, which are hereby incorporated by reference herein in their entireties. This application claims the benefit of and claims priority to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/890,517, filed Feb. 7, 2018, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/722,620, filed May 27, 2015, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,922,608.
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