Patent ID: 8605123

Claim:
A method of driving a backlight assembly having a brightness corresponding to one of a plurality of dimming steps to provide light to a display panel, the backlight assembly comprising at least two light emitting blocks having at least one sub-block, the method comprising: sequentially outputting at least two scan signals having a scanning frequency synchronized with a frame frequency of the display panel; determining a dimming step of each of the light emitting blocks in response to local dimming data generated based on an image signal provided to the display panel; converting a predetermined reference clock to a dimming clock, wherein a frequency of the dimming clock is a result of the scanning frequency being multiplied by the number of dimming steps and then being divided by a duty ratio of each of the scan signals; counting the dimming step of each of the light emitting blocks using the dimming clock and combining the counted values with the scan signals to generate dimming signals each having a dimming duty ratio corresponding to the dimming step of each of the light emitting blocks; receiving a global dimming signal to control an overall brightness of the backlight assembly; and adjusting the frequency of the dimming clock based on a duty ratio of the global dimming signal, wherein each of the at least two scans is successively output with a predetermined time interval and each of the dimming signals is set to a high level in response to a rising timing edge of a corresponding scan signal among the at least two scan signals, and wherein a first one of the scan signals has a first riding edge, a sequential second one of the scan signals has a second rising edge after the first rising edge, a first one of the dimming signals transitions to a high level at the first rising edge, and a sequential second one of the dimming signals transitions to the high level at the second rising edge.