Scan order decision algorithm for improving the reliability of PDP data drivers

This paper proposes a new scan method to protect the data drivers of the plasma display panel from the damage caused by excessive signal switching. The proposed method reduces the signal switching numbers of the data driver by selecting an optimal scan order adaptively for a given input image. The proposed method computes the optimal scan order by mapping the problem onto an traveling salesman problem. In case of pathological benchmark images, the proposed method reduced the switching number by up to 99.8~99.86%, when compared to the existing scan methods.