Thermal Management of Outdoor Digital Displays - A Review

Outdoor digital displays are increasingly being used for information dissemination, interactive content location, and advertising in urban locations. While the existing thermal management approaches for indoor digital displays are well understood and generally sufficient due to their lower power dissipation, outdoor liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are subject to many additional constraints, such as harsher and changing ambient environment, solar insolation, and larger internal heat generation in the current state-of-the-art light emitting diodes (LEDs) and other associated electronics. Demands for larger and brighter displays continue to provide significant additional challenges to their thermal design. Here we review the current and emerging thermal management challenges, and current solutions for outdoor digital displays. We review the state-of-the-art of the multi-scale nature of the packaging of the digital displays, from the light sources to the display cabinet. The unique thermal management challenges for outdoor displays are next outlined. We review current thermal management methods for outdoor displays. We conclude by describing emerging applications of outdoor digital displays, and identify associated thermal challenges.