Abstract: Three example inverter designs are described that can be tailored to drive from one to dozens of lamps of a backlight for a liquid crystal display. For each design the lamps are driven by a 40 kHz to 60 kHz sine wave. The lamp voltage is ˜1200V to “strike” the lamps and ˜600V to produce the optimal 5 mA in each lamp. The designs are: a Royer linear oscillator driven by a buck converter stage, a push-pull inverter that drives the high voltage transformer directly, and a class-D amplifier that produces the drive sine wave using a pulse width modulation technique.

Abstract: System and method for synchronizing the low speed mirror movement of a mirror display system with incoming frame or video signals, and synchronizing buffered lines of video data to the independently oscillating scanning mirror. According to one embodiment of the invention, the peak portions of the low speed cyclic drive signal are synchronized with the incoming frames of video by compressing or expanding the peak portion or turn around portion so that each video frame begins at the same location on the display screen. The actual position of the high frequency mirror is determined by sensors and a “trigger” signal is generated to distribute the signals for each scan line such that the scan lines are properly positioned on the display.

Abstract: Various systems and methods for LCD backlight control are disclosed herein. For example, some embodiments of the present invention provide an LCD backlight circuit with an analog inverter circuit that provides a drive voltage to a lamp. A current traversing the lamp is sensed and provided to a digital control circuit. Based on the sensed current, the digital control circuit generates a control signal that is fed back to the analog inverter circuit. In some cases, the digital control circuit is used to cause a gradual increase in voltage applied to the lamp to achieve ignition of the lamp. In other cases, the digital control is used to provide a pre-distorted sine wave that attenuates one or more harmonics introduced into the system by the non-linearities of the lamp.

Abstract: A method for maintaining the amplitude of oscillations of a mirror system comprising a high-Q resonant mirror driven by a high speed drive signal. Sensors monitor the sweep amplitude of the high-Q resonant mirror and a parameter of the drive signal is adjusted to maintain the sweep amplitude of the mirror at a constant value. According to one embodiment, the frequency of the drive signal is adjusted to more closely track the resonant frequency of the mirror, and according to another embodiment, the amplitude of the drive signal is increased to increase the amplitude of the sweep motion of the mirror. According to a third embodiment, the sweep amplitude may be maintained by adjusting both the drive signal amplitude and the drive signal frequency.

Abstract: A method for aligning consecutive scan lines of a mirror based visual system produced by the bi-directional scan of a resonant mirror is disclosed. The actual position for the mirror is determined or measured by any suitable method. The measured position of the mirror is used to generate a first trigger signal to start a scan line in a first direction at a selected location and to generate a trigger to start a scan line in the reverse direction at a second location.

Abstract: A method of improving the quality of a scanning mirror based imaging system such as a printer or a display system by increasing the laser duty cycle, according to a first embodiment by adjusting the intensity parameter of the received video signals as a function of the velocity of the mirrors. The image quality may be further improved by scaling the output rate of the pixel clocking signal as a function of the sinusoidal motion of the oscillating mirror.

Abstract: A mirror display system comprising a multiplicity of scan lines that are combined to generate an image. The multiplicity of scan lines are orthogonally positioned in response to a slow speed cyclic drive signal (for example, sinusoidal or repetitive triangular shape). To increase the brightness of the display, and unlike a typical raster scan display, scan lines are generated during both the positive going portion and the negative going portion of the cyclic drive signal.