Patent ID: 7738002

Claim:
An apparatus for control of a luminaire including one or more light-emitting elements in one or more colors, each of the one or more light-emitting elements being supplied with electrical current to produce light, said apparatus comprising a modulator configured to: adjust the electrical current to the one or more light-emitting elements using pulse width modulation or pulse code modulation based on an N+M input control signal that includes an N-bit word of N most significant bits having a value n with a maximum value of 2 N −1, and an M-bit word of M least significant bits having a value m, each of said pulse width modulation and pulse code modulation having a pulse cycle; and modulate a pulse width for each pulse cycle based on the N+M input control signal for increasing control resolution of the one or more light-emitting elements from 2 N to 2 N+m states when n<2 N −1 and n>0, where N and M are integers greater that zero and N is greater than M, the modulator including an N-bit controller.