Adaptive Color Saturation Control for Low Power RGBW OLED Displays

As the OLED display size is larger, power consumption is less efficient because more energy is lost as heat in OLED light-emitting devices. Thus, power consumption reduction becomes an important practical issue. For signal-level power reduction, the existing method sacrifices the color saturation of the displayed image. Color is desaturated with a fixed ratio regardless of whether the color is neutral or saturated, and it consequently lowers colorimetric accuracy excessively. In this paper, we straightforwardly extend the existing work by adaptively controlling the extent of color saturation based on the principle of JNCD (Just Noticeable Color Difference). By using JNCD, it is possible to determine the color saturation ratio of a pixel adaptively, and we can reduce power consumption while minimizing perceptual color distortion. Experimental results with the RGBW-type 55 inches OLED TV confirm that the proposed method can efficiently reduce power consumption of OLED displays.