Sorted Sector Covering Combined with Image Condensation -- An Efficient Method for Local Dimming of Direct-Lit and Edge-Lit LCDs

We consider the backlight calculation of local dimming as an optimization problem. The luminance produced by many LEDs at each pixel considered is calculated which should cover the gray value of each pixel, while the sum of LED currents is to be minimized. For this purpose a specific approach called as “Sorted Sector Covering” (SSC) was developed and is described in this paper. In our pre-processing unit called condenser the source image is reduced to a matrix of much lower resolution so that the computation effort of the SSC algorithm is drastically reduced. During this preprocessing phase, filter functions can be integrated so that a further reduction of the power consumption is achieved. Our processing system allows high power saving and high visual quality at low processor cost. We approach the local dimming problem in the physical viewing direction — from LED to pixel. The luminance for the pixel is based on the light spread function (LSF) and the PWM values of the LEDs. As the physical viewing direction is chosen, this method is universal and can be applied for any kind of LED arrangement — direct-lit as well as edge-lit. It is validated on prototypes, e.g., a locally dimmed edge-lit TV. key words: local dimming, backlight, algorithm, LED, edge-lit, side-lit, direct-lit, interaction between LEDs, crosstalk, optimization, high power saving, efficient processor