JOURNAL OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 8, NO.

4, APRIL 2012

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The Compact Systems Design Based on DMD and

the Straight Line 2-Channel LED for a Mobile
Embedded Pico Projector
Sung Chul Shin, Yunsuk Jung, Tae-Jeong Ahn, Sang Sik Jeong, Seung-Gyu Lee, and Kwang-Yeol Choi

AbstractWe have successfully designed the most compact mobile embedded pico projector system, with an optical module size
of up to 2.1 cc (20.6 16.4 6.2 mm), compared with the liquid
crystal on silicon (LCoS) based projector system, which has an engine size of 10 cc. The most compact pico projector system, with
a reduction in size of about 25%, can be obtained. It consists of
a projected optical system based on field lens type with 0.2 nHD
(640 360) digital micromirror device (DMD) panel and an illumination part of the 2 channel type with 2 in1 LED source. It can be
obtained the available display image size about 560 inches with
uniformity over 70%, brightness 8 lm at LED power consumption
1 W and contrast ratio 1700:1 in the dark room.
Index TermsDLP, field lens, led, mobile, phone, pico, projector.

high brightness according to our consumer insight is required

10 lm in house space.
In the case of the liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) panel type,
the size of a pico projector module with a normal reflective
structure can be up to 10 cc, and its system has low optical efficiency and low contrast by LCoS panel property.
In this paper, the pico projector system including electric
board is designed with a slight thickness of 6.9 m and small
volume size of 3.5 cc, using the 2-channel illumination combination system and the field lens projected optical system. The
RGB 2-in-1 LED light source and the 0.2 digital micromirror
device (DMD) panel are used to implement high efficiency (8
lm@3.5 cc) and high image quality (1700:1, nHD: 640 360).

I. INTRODUCTION
II. PICO PROJECTOR DISPLAY SYSTEM

MOBILE DEVICE can implement various multimedia

service functions as a smart phone, which is an integrated terminal that is equipped with PC functions. On the other
hand, consumers want to obtain information in real-time regardless of the time zone, be able to carry the terminal in their
hands regardless of the place, and view the image on a wider
screen. However, conventional mobile devices cannot display a
large sized image like a TV can. As a result, a project structure
was presented that has been integrated into mobile devices, as
a means of displaying a large sized image while providing mobility. This structure has been developed as a sub-display function of the mobile device.
The pico projector in mobile devices has been shown to significantly display a larger image size in mobile life space. First,
the pico projector should be designed as a thin and small-size
module that considers the thickness of the mobile phone and
that uses the same method of integrating a camera module into
the phone. For example, the required thickness of the module of
our companys feature phone is less than 7 mm. Also, the mobile
embedded pico projector should provide high brightness and
contrast at a low power consumption, which is supported by the
mobile device, so that users can recognize an image without inconvenience in an outdoor mobile spaces environment. So, the

Manuscript received April 12, 2011; revised June 10, 2011 and August 16,
2011; accepted August 17, 2011. Date of current version March 28, 2012.
The authors are with the Future Device R&D Lab., Advanced Research Institute, LG Electronics, 16 Woomyeon-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul 137-724, Korea
(e-mail: sungchul.shin@lge.com; yunsuk.jung@lge.com; ace.ahn@lge.com;
sangsik.jeong@lge.com; seunggyu1.lee@lge.com; kwangyeol.choi@lge.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures are available online at http://
ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JDT.2011.2165934

As shown in Fig. 1, we selected the field lens projected optical

system for integration with the mobile device, because compared to the reflected mirror structure this kind of optical system
opts to reduce the thickness of the system.
Generally, DMD panels can be grouped into one of two types
of pixel structure (a diamond square or a Manhattan square) [1].
A DMD chip has on its surface several hundred thousand microscopic mirrors arranged in a rectangular array which correspond
to the pixels in the image to be displayed. As shown in Fig. 1, the
mirrors can be individually rotated at 10 12 , to an on or off
state. The 0.2 DMD panel has a Manhattan square pixel shape
and is operated diagonally each pixel. As a result, the beam is
projected from the bottom of the diagonal of the panel toward
the center. Which is to say, the beam is projected in a three-dimensional direction. Therefore, the optical axis of the -coordinate coming out of the illumination combination system is located under the center of the panels active area, and the position
difference affects the thickness. Therefore, the mirror reflection
structure [Fig. 2(b)] cannot properly reduce the thickness of the
system module, because the reflection mirror is located at the
same position with the optical axis of the illumination combination system. Whereas, the field lens structure [Fig. 2(a)] can
reduce the difference between the optical axis coming out of
the illumination combination system and the center of the active panel area, because the positive lens, which has an optical
axis that is shifted upwards from the center of the active panel
area, is positioned before the panel.
It is assumed that the project for the mobile device is put on
the table and the image is projected to the displayed the screen,
as the field lens is designed with an upward projection structure
(100% projection offset). Of course, efficient and optimal design

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Fig. 1. DMD principle with Manhattan square pixel type. a. DMD operation principle; b. DMD with Manhattan square pixel.

Fig. 2. LED DLP pico projector display systems by reflected mirror type and field lens type. (a) Reflected mirror type. (b) Field lens type.

is required, as some of the reflected mirror, which reflects the

beam coming out of the lighting combination system, can interfere with the beam ray coming out of the field lens. To achieve
efficient and optimal design, the collimated lens positioned in
front of the FEL (Fly Eye Lenses for uniform irradiance distribution on DMD panel) can be moved to the -axis, so that the
illumination combination system can be moved upwards in relation to the shifted distance and the overall thickness can be
reduced. As shown in Fig. 2, the field lens structure can reduce
thickness by more than 1 mm, compared to a reflected mirror
type. The actual optical module size for a field lens type can be
up to 2.1 cc (20.6 16.4 6.2 mm .
The projector illumination system generally has the
3-channel structure that collimates and combines the Lambertian distribution of each RGB light source as shown in Fig. 3
[2]. Even though it has a 2-channel structure, it is an L structure. Therefore, there is not actually much of a difference in the
spatial reduction of size (up to 4.7 cc), as the LED is always
positioned to the -axis length directionthe vertical incident
angle to the FEL side, compared with the 3-channel structure.
However, as shown in Fig. 2, by using the 2-in-1 LED that is
included in a single package the -axis direction length could
be reduced significantly by positioning the LED 2 chips, which
have a different wavelength, with the straight line 2-channel
illumination combination system structure. The most compact
pico projector system, with a reduction in size of about 25%,

can be obtained: We have successfully improved the size of the

compact system, making it about three times smaller than the
LCoS pico projector system, and reducing its thickness to less
than 7 mm, compared with 9 mm for the LCoS pico projector.
Generally, the 2-channel LED is composed of a green LED
and a red/blue LED, in order to secure the green LED chip area,
which has a higher brightness ratio [3]. In this system, the red
LED and the green/blue LED were positioned separately by two
considered factors. One factor is that the inefficient red LED
generates a lot of heat, and affects the blue chip, which is positioned in the same LED package. This results in a difficulty in
stabilizing the color uniformity and light source efficiency. The
other factor is that the colors blue and green belong to the same
neighboring wavelength band in the color combination system,
which combines of the light sources and sends them to one light
source path on optical axis. Simple reflection/transmission filter
structure coating can then be performed and high light efficiency
can be obtained.
The 2-in-1 LED can affect color uniformity, as two LED chips
with different wavelengths are positioned in a single package.
Therefore, two kinds of structures were used to combine two different wavelengths in two LEDs uniformly in the illumination
combination system. The one structure positions the Y-direction cylindrical FEL between the collimated lens and the color
combiner, so that the collimated beam can arrive uniformly in
the FEL plane of incidence. This has the advantage of using the

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Fig. 3. LED DLP Field lens type pico projector system with the 3-channel and the 2-channel.

Fig. 4. Wwedge X-plate color combiner design for color uniformity. (a) X-plate color combiner type. (b) Wedge X-plate color combiner type.

conventional color combiner as it is. However, more space is

required for the cylindrical FEL components. As a result, optical transmitted efficiency deterioration and material cost increase effects are expected. The other structure is a color combiner as shown in Fig. 4, and a wedge X-plate structure, optimizes a wedge tilting angle, so that the reflection coating with
each different wavelength coming from the front and rear side of
the wedge plate can be matched on the FEL plane of incidence.
When an x-plate is used to combine the 2-in-1 LED color, it horizontally appeared the uninformed color distribution like color
gray gamut. However, we have successfully obtained color uniformity of over 70% by applying a wedge X-plate.
The system arranged the 0.7 0.7 mm 2-in-1 LEDs chip total
dimension ratio in a way that is similar to the 0.2 DMD panels
dimension ratio of 16:9 so that a practical high light efficiency
that is in accordance with the principle of etandue can be attained. In addition, as the beam is transferred from the FEL to
the DMD plane by the reflected mirror component, which is
tilted in a three dimensional space, the active light area on the
display panels plane is rotated when the beam rays coming out
of the illumination combination system are sent to the panel at
the desired incidence angle. Consequently, as shown in Fig. 5,
compensation rotation was applied to LED and FEL to efficiently match the active square area ratio of the panel.
Table I shows the optical specification of projection lens. The
optical projected lens system is designed with four glass lenses
and two plastic lenses for the standard specification of a 30-inch
image size at a 1150 mm object distance. Then, the optical per-

formance is optimized at a 5 60 inch image size by setting the

focus adjustment range. When the total effective RGB LED light
intensity is 35 lm@W, the simulated brightness intensity is secured up to 10 lm (@ANSI uniformity 70%), and color temperature
targets 7000 (
,
, @ color
in the optical illumination system.
uniformity
The effective size of the optical module was only set to 2.1 cc
(20.6 16.4 6.2 mm) to design the ultra-small pico projector.
III. SYSTEM PROTOTYPE
Fig. 6 shows the structural diagram of the mobile embedded
pico projector prototype. The actual size of the mechanical engine module of the mobile embedded pico projector system prototype was measured as 3.5 cc (23.9 21.3 6.9 mm), including the DMD panel. Basically, the device has a mounted
structure that is based on an all-in-one body. Optical parts are
mounted first and then are covered with a flat plate. Therefore,
the heat that is generated by the LED is transmitted to the LED
presser that covers the LED metal PCB, and an all-in-one body
is mounted directly, and is transmitted to the mobile device body
again. The temperature measurement graph in Fig. 6 shows that
the phone sets temperature (about 39 ) satisfies the temperature
requirement of the touchable surface standard EN563: 48 .
The cooling experiment result estimated that heat transmission
was stabilized in the all-in-one mount structure [5].
The projected lens system part is separated from the main
body for focus adjustment according to the projection distance
and has a cylinder guide structure that enables the user to move

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Fig. 5. Rotated LED/FEL design for high optical efficiency on DMD by field lens.

TABLE I
OPTICAL SPECIFICATION OF PROJECTION LENS

the back focal on the optical axis while mounting the projection
lenses as shown in the 3D view of Fig. 6.
The result of the image quality measurement from the prototype shows that brightness at 1.5 W total power consumption
was 8 lm at 70% ANSI uniformity, and 1700:1 contrast ratio
in the dark room. On average the color temperature K was
,
). In the review
measured as 8000 (
of the prototype, the wedge x-plate was segmented with three
parts (a red-reflected coating plate filter, green/blue each reflected coating wedge plate filter, and a reflected coating prism),
as shown in Fig. 4(b). So, there was some loss of optical illumination due to the limited coating condition according to the
plate filters tilting angle and the center bonding area of the combined part. And, in the estimation of the components, it was
found that the optical system efficiency of the projection lens
was low compared with the simulation value, because the lens
D-cut boundary area was not homogenous by birefringence. It
was analyzed that the light intensity loss (compared with the

simulation) could be compensated, if the wedge x-plate coating

within the cone angle range and the bonding of combined parts
are stabilized, and that D-cut projected lens efficiency can be improved in the mold manufacturing process. Fig. 7 shows the pico
projector module prototype integrated with the mobile device.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this study, an ultra-small LED DLP pico projector system
was designed with the dimensions 23.0 mm (width) 21.9 mm
(length) 6.9 mm (thickness) ( 3.5 cc), and its prototype was
produced using a straight line 2-channel LED structure. It means
that the actual whole size of the mechanical engine module
based on DMD and the straight line 2-channel LED for a mobile embedded pico projector is reduced about 25%, especially
thickness has less than 7 mm for embedding a mobile phone.
This projector system can provide a good efficiency [ 23%, 8

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223

Fig. 6. Structural diagram and thermal test of the engine module.

Fig. 7. Mobile embedded projection device. (a) Pico projector module. (b) Mobile embedded projector demo.

Fig. 8. Development of all-in-one type engine & driver development.

lm @ANSI uniformity 70%) and a good quality image (contrast 1700:1, nHD (640 360)] with the total power consumption 1.5 W. It seems obvious that the pico projector system device has the advantage of being able to be integrated into already
conventional mobile devices, as the small engine module is provided that is less than 7 mm in thickness. Furthermore, the 3.5
cc volume structure with its practical regular hexahedron and
compact shape, would support integration with a mobile device,
and would allow for easy application to portable devices such as
laptops and console games. If the driving circuit board is manufactured in a three dimension shape, and if an all-in-one type
could be developed that covers the engine module, as shown in
Fig. 8, a detachable accessory product (e.g., a charging gender)
for the mobile device could also be widely marketed.
The brightness and resolution of the pico projector system
depend heavily on the light source and the micro display panel.

Therefore, if an LED light source and a micro display panel

can be developed successfully, a pico projector that implements
over 15 lm brightness and provides high-quality resolution
could then be developed without any great effort. However, a
major concern would be developing a highly efficient system
that can minimize the systems size optimally in consideration
of its thickness. This is because the systems limited thickness
affects the panel size, light source size, and the lens components active aperture.
In the next step, we will internally evaluate several reliable
engine module tests for a mobile embedded pico projector. (e.g.,
drop test, dust test, vibration teat, etc.)
REFERENCES
[1] Texas Instruments Incorporated, Introduction to Digital Micro Mirror
Device (DMD) Technology, Appl. Rep. DLPA008, Jul. 2008.

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[2] S. J. Park, S. M. Kim, and C. S. Won, Design considerations for picoprojector based on LCoS and 3-LEDs, in 2011 IEEE Int. Conf. on
Consumer Electron. (ICCE), 2011, pp. 805806.
[3] S. Morgott, S. Groetsch, W. Schnabel, and D. Wiener, LED light
sources for mobile embedded projection, in Proc. SPIE 7723, 2010,
vol. 77230.
[4] E. Piehler, Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH, , Germany, System in which light
is directed from a light source onto a surface, U.S. Patent 6 439 726,
Aug. 27, 2002.
[5] P. Marks, Projector phones: Cool app or visual pollution, The New
Scientist, vol. 201, no. 2697, pp. 1819, 2009.

Sung Chul Shin received the Ph.D. degree in engineering from University of
Warwick, Warwick, U.K., in 2004.
He is currently with the Advanced Device (AD) Gr, Future Device R&D Lab.,
Advanced Research Institute, LG Electronics, Seoul, Korea, as a chief research
engineer.

Yunsuk Jung received the M.A. degree in electronic & electrical engineering
from Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea, in 2007.
She is currently with the Advanced Device (AD) Gr. Future Device R&D
Lab., Advanced Research Institute, LG Electronics, Seoul, Korea, as an junior
research engineer.

Tae-Jeong Ahn received the M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from

Hanyang University in Korea in 2000.
He is currently with the Advanced Device (AD) Gr. Future Device R&D Lab.,
Advanced Research Institute, LG Electronics, Seoul, Korea, as a chief research
engineer.

Sang Sik Jeong received the M.A. degree in Electronic Engineering from
Dongguk University in Korea in 1990.
He is currently with the Advanced Device (AD) Gr. Future Device R&D Lab.,
Advanced Research Institute, LG Electronics, Seoul, Korea, as Part leader and
a principal Research Engineer.

Seung-Gyu Lee received the M.A. degree in Physical Education from Seoul
National University in Korea in 2005.
He is currently with the Advanced Device (AD) Gr, Future Device R&D Lab.,
Advanced Research Institute, as group leader and a research follower.

Kwang-Yeol Choi is currently with Future Device R&D Lab., Advanced Research Institute, LG Electronics, Seoul, Korea, as laboratory director and a principal research engineer since 2010.