Patent ID: 7312768

Claim:
A panel driving apparatus that performs an addressing and a sustain discharge on a panel including a plurality of scan electrode groups and one or more common electrode groups, comprising: a subfield processor dividing a frame period into a plurality of subfields; a signal combiner generating an address signal to selectively address cells to be turned on among all cells on the panel in a subfield and generating a sustain signal to perform a sustain discharge in addressed cells; and an electrode driver selectively driving the subfields according to the address signal and the sustain signal and driving each of cell groups to determine a gray scale of brightness of the cells on the panel, wherein the signal combiner sequentially performs an address period and a sustain period on each cell group and generates the address signal and the sustain signal such that while cells included in one cell group are addressed, cells included in the other cell groups are in an idle state and such that while the sustain period is performed on cells included in one cell group after being addressed, the sustain period is selectively performed on cells included in other cell groups having been addressed, and wherein the electrode driver applies different bias voltages for the respective cell groups to the one or more common electrode groups while the address period is sequentially performed on the cell groups.