Currently, under the background of carbon peak and carbon neutrality policies, the whole industry is committed to actively realizing energy saving and consumption reduction of products with low cost and high efficiency by means of scientific and technological innovation. As a global industry leader in the field of LED display driver chip, Chipone’s R&D team has been deeply engaged in various low-power design innovations of LED displays, with the purpose of reducing the overall power consumption of LED display from the design source through energy-saving innovation for driving technology, and leading the entire LED display industry to contribute to the ultimate realization of global low-carbon sustainable development goals.
When talking about the importance of energy-saving innovation, the head of Chipone LED Display Division said, as an innovation pioneer with a global market share of more than 50%, one of the important research and development directions of Chipone LED Division in the future is certainly to realize the energy-saving innovation for display driver. Because that is an unavoidable social responsibility for any industry leader in the ESG field.
As the LED displays has become more and more closely spaced, the challenges that plague all display manufacturers are not only the higher requirements for display performance, but also the difficulty in screen temperature and power consumption. The smooth implementation of "Baicheng Qianping” (a program for upgrading public LED displays) has accelerated the implementation of LED outdoor media advertising displays. In today’s low-carbon era, how to reduce the energy consumption of the displays has become a problem that must be addressed by the entire LED supply chain.
For the power composition of LED large display, the main relevant elements include LED lamp bead, driver IC, controller, line loss, conversion efficiency of switching power, most of the power composition is concentrated in the LED lamp bead, and the power consumption of driver IC in pixel pitch lower than 1mm applications increases greatly. According to the calculation formula P=V*I to reduce power consumption, the optimization and innovation of design can be made from the perspectives of current and voltage. In this regard, Chipone can provide the following relevant technical solutions.
Optimization of system voltage design
1. Low knee voltage driver reduces the power consumption by up to 20%
Low knee voltage driver technology can ensure that under lower knee-point voltage, the output current of driver IC enters into constant current area and drives the LED lamp bead stably. Low knee voltage driver technology can reduce the power voltage of the entire system, thus reducing the power consumption of the LED lamp bead and driver IC. It can reduce the power consumption by up to 20% compared with traditional driver scheme. Chipone’s driver ICs integrated with low knee voltage driver technology include ICND2046, ICND2150S, ICND2159, ICND2069, etc.
2. Common-cathode driver reduces the system power consumption by up to 30%
Since 2018, with the rapid development of Mini LED, common-cathode driver has become a preferred driver solution. The traditional common anode driver solution adopts unified power voltage, while the forward voltage of red lamp is 1V lower than that of green and blue lamps, so there is loss caused by excess voltage on red lamp.
When common-cathode driver circuit is introduced, the extra power loss of red lamp can be avoided by separate power supply for driver IC. The traditional RGB unified power supply mode can be changed into power supply of 2.8V and 3.8V separately to reduce the system power consumption by up to 30%. Chipone has developed and produced a number of common-cathode driver ICs, including ICND2049, ICND2069, ICND2159, ICND2210, etc.
3. Improved scan design
In 2017, Chipone launched the first improved scan driver ICICND2065 supporting 1~64 scan lines, leading the industry to upgrade from 32-line scan design to 64-line scan design. The improved scan design reduces the number of ICs by half, accompanied with reduced power consumption and temperature, lower difficulty in PCB design and fewer PCB layers, improved patching efficiency, as well as further reduced overall cost of lamp board. Chipone has also successfully developed 128-line scan driver, and it will further optimize and improve the driver architecture.
