State inversion of plasma panel cell

Two pulses applied in sequence to a cell of a plasma panel cause inversion of the state of the cell. The first, an inverting write pulse V
wi
, narrower than a normal write pulse and positioned within the discharge recovery time ahead of a sustain pulse, can cause a cell to switch "on" in such a way that the cell wall voltage builds up to its steady-state value gradually over several sustain cycles. The second is a conventional erase pulse V
e
. If the cell is initially "on," V
wi
has no effect while V
e
inverts the cell to the "off" state. On the other hand, if the cell is initially "off," V
wi
causes a low-level discharge such that the wall voltage is too low at the time V
e
is applied to the cell to cause a discharge, but the wall voltage keeps building up to a steady "on" state through a number of sustain cycles. Thus V
e
has no effect and the cell remains "on." Using the state inversion, a blinking cursor has been successfully demonstrated on an 80 × 256 plasma panel. Negative image and bandwidth reduction in bilevel picture transmission could also be achieved with state inversion.