05 Dec Smooth data transmission to microdisplays
Researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS have developed a universal converter for microdisplay data. The new data converter, called UDDC, converts graphic or video data into electronic pulses for controlling various microdisplays and thus offers developers various interfaces for displaying images and videos on them.
The central element is a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). According to the researchers, the challenge during development was to achieve maximum flexibility of the FPGA while minimizing installation space in order to simplify integration into prototype systems.
The microdisplays developed at Fraunhofer IPMS is be able to use established video protocols from the industry with this converter, including D-PHY+DSI from the MIPI Alliance in the field of mobile devices or SDI, which is used in professional broadcasting. The UDDC is also a universal and modular platform for easy adaptation of the microdisplays to customer-specific video protocols, for example based on LVDS.
Significantly reduced development effort
Until now, microdisplays could either be used directly, whereby a suitable data source had to be available in the system, for example DPI for video displays, or a complex system with a transmitter chip had to be created to carry out the conversion. Depending on the protocol used, this could be very time-consuming.
“The flexible UDDC electronics platform means that only the video input circuit board needs to be replaced,” explains Florian Schuster, a scientist in IC and system design at Fraunhofer IPMS. “In the simplest case, only one connector for the respective video interface needs to be replaced. In addition, the overall system is only minimally larger than the microdisplay so that it can be easily integrated into customer applications.” For complex video protocols, the addition of further video ICs may be necessary. In all cases though, the circuitry for operating the most complex system component – the FPGA – is not changed. This means that the entire PCB development effort for an FPGA is eliminated, as the system PCB can be combined with any video input PCB.
Source and image: www.ipms.fraunhofer.de
