Local dimming LCDs with a matrix backlight unit (BLU) are favored by many car manufacturers for high quality and low power displays. Automotive application sets high requirement like safety standard, whereas the temperature range and lifespan are wide.
The contents are mostly HMIs with high contrast and circular structures. Thus, the two key components, BLU and the local dimming algorithm need to be adopted to automotive needs/demands and shall be jointly optimized. In this paper, the BLU design aspects and specification are described. Specific features relevant for automotive, like black corners and containment against LED outage, are introduced. The tradeoff between performance and cost is lifted. With a BLU with 384 LEDs, the contrast ratio may be enhanced by a factor of 20, while an average power saving ratio of 50% can be achieved.
Local dimming (LD) has been selected as the next mainstream
display technology for automotive. The advantages over current
edge‐lit LCDs and AMOLEDs are significant. Nevertheless, there
are still many issues to be addressed. It must meet tough
automotive requirements and safety standards and display
automotive HMIs with high contrast and circular structures. The
fault tolerance with HMI is much lower compared to displaying
natural contents like that of TVs. Such an LD display is a tradeoff
between performance like power saving and visual quality at one
side and cost at other side. To lift this tradeoff, three methods need
to be worked on and combined.
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