Plasma Display Panel Driver With Dissymmetric Energy Transfer Speed for High Efficiency and Fast Voltage Transition

A plasma display panel (PDP) driver with dissymmetric energy transfer speed is designed to obtain fast voltage transition during the up-commutation period and improved efficiency during the down-commutation period. The proposed driver configures the sustain circuit and the resonant circuit in such a way that the resonant network is energized by the sustain voltage level and the half sustain voltage level in charging and discharging the panel capacitor, respectively. The energy transferred into the panel from the power supply is twice as fast as the conventional Weber-type driver biased by half sustain voltage level, for improved image quality and display resolution. The proposed driver, on the other hand, recovers the panel energy using the resonant circuit with the half sustain voltage and increased inductance, leading to enhanced energy recovery. Moreover, the proposed driver is supplied from half of required sustain voltage level. As a result, the proposed driver can be designed by devices with reduced voltage rating compared with the conventional Weber-type driver. Therefore, the PDP driver presented in this paper can feature faster sustain voltage transition, higher brightness, uniform images, low-voltage power supply, low-voltage-rating switching devices, and high efficiency.