Design of Timing Controller of Electronic Paper with Frame Buffer Reduction

Due to the bistable property of the electronic paper (ePaper), its driving sequence starts from erasing the previous image and then the pixels are driven to the target state according to the next image. The timing controller (TCON) of ePaper typically contains two image buffers to store the previous and the next image data. This paper presents a new TCON for ePaper which contains only an image buffer. Unlike the traditional ePaper TCON, which receives the next image data and stores it in an image buffer inside the TCON, the new TCON continuously receives the data of the next image when the image update period and the image buffer for the next image is eliminated. This new TCON leverages the property of the video decoder which continuously sends out the image data in video rate. The TCON compares the incoming image data with the previous image data to sequentially send out the driving signals. With this new architecture, the required memory buffer could be significantly reduced.