Performance analysis of PLED based flat panel display with RGBW sub-pixel layout

PLED based flat panel displays with RGBW sub-pixel format utilizing a white emitter as the fourth primary, was analyzed theoretically and experimentally. Instead of the traditional white point characterization method, uniform luminance color space was introduced to characterize the display performance in a more realistic way. In the uniform luminance color space, after the power efficiency of the white emitter exceeds a threshold determined by the green emitter's efficiency, the RGBW display becomes more energy efficient than the RGB display. To simulate the display performance in different applications, such as computer desktop visualization, or video application, the color usage frequency with Gaussian distribution was adopted. As the color usage frequency distribution gets closer to that in the real images, the full color pixel's power efficiency of the RGBW display is more and more dependent on the EL performance of the white emitter. With a highly efficient white emitter as W sub-pixel, the RGBW display will be the preferable choice for displaying video information. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.