ASTRI’s research in display technology wins international award

A research team of ASTRI has recently won the “IDW Outstanding Poster Paper Award” at the 15th International Display Workshops (IDW) held in Niigata, Japan for its innovative ideas on liquid crystal display (LCD) power saving.
By: HK Applied Science & Technology Research Institute
 
Jan. 8, 2009 - PRLog -- A research team of the Material and Packaging Technologies Group of the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) has recently won the “IDW Outstanding Poster Paper Award” at the 15th International Display Workshops (IDW) held in Niigata, Japan for its innovative ideas on liquid crystal display (LCD) power saving.

Entitled “LCD Power Saving Using Adaptive Global Backlight Dimming”, the research paper submitted by the ASTRI researchers proposed a novel method to adaptively dim the LCD backlight, which was found to be the major source of power consumption of LCD-based products, and dynamically tune the image signal to save power and preserve display brightness simultaneously.

The leader of the research team Dr Min Chen, Senior Engineer of ASTRI, said, “Conventional LCD display has two major shortcomings. Firstly, power consumption is constant irrespective of the brightness of the displayed image; and secondly, the contrast and brightness of the image decreases with the reduction of the backlight. We have overcome the challenges by developing a method to dynamically control the LCD backlight dimming in accordance with the brightness of image.

“The technique makes use of the unique properties of the light emitting diode (LED) and rides on ASTRI’s high efficiency LED backlight optical modules. The algorithm has been put to stringent tests in a series of laboratory experiments, which revealed that our method achieved a power saving by an average of more than 20 percent and at the same time minimized image distortion effectively. It is equally applicable to LCD using cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) or LED backlight.”

The ASTRI innovation can be applied in devices with LCD display, such as LCD TV, cell phone and laptop, for effective power saving, and has proved to be competitive with those developed by renowned LCD panel manufacturers, such as Sony, Sharp, Samsung and LG.Philips. Several major TV manufacturers in China have expressed interest to ASTRI in adopting the technique to design their next generation products.

Under the supervision of the Institute’s Vice President and Group Director Dr Enboa Wu and Director Dr Tsai Chen Jung and with the support of the whole LED Division of ASTRI, members of the research team, including Engineers Ms Wendy Zhang Wei and Ms Michelle Niu Weihong, have devoted more than two years of consolidated efforts in developing the innovation from theory to algorithm design to implementation. The novel technique has involved more than seven patents filed by ASTRI.

IDW is one of the most renowned international conferences in display technology. The IDW’08 held in Niigata, Japan last December featured 13 workshops and two topical sessions, which showcased the scientific and technological advances in research and development on information displays. The “IDW Outstanding Poster Paper Awards” were presented to outstanding research papers for their originalities and technical significance.

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About ASTRI

The Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company Limited (ASTRI) was founded by the HKSAR Government in 2001 with a mission to enhance Hong Kong's competitiveness in technology-based industries through applied research. In 2006, ASTRI was designated the Hong Kong Research and Development Centre for Information and Communications Technologies (HK R&D Centre for ICT) by the Innovation and Technology Commission to market leading-edge R&D for technology transfer to industry, to develop needed technical human resources, and to act as a focal point bringing together industry and university R&D assets. ASTRI has been conducting a spectrum of world-class research with a relentless focus on the customer and a commitment to continuously bringing technological advances to Hong Kong. Over the past few years, ASTRI has built teams of excellent researchers, registered many intellectual property rights and transferred much technology to industry clients, creating major economic impact for Hong Kong, Pearl River Delta and other parts of China.  

For more information, please visit http://www.astri.org
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Source:HK Applied Science & Technology Research Institute
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Tags:Display Technology, Information Displays, Lcd, Power Saving, Backlight Dimming, Algorithm Design, Technological Advances
Industry:Electronics, Technology, Semiconductors
Location:Hong Kong - Hong Kong Island - Hong Kong
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