All you need to know about MIPI D-PHY RX

Love Gupta, Freescale
EDN (September 08, 2015)

MIPI D’Phy, a physical serial communicating layer connecting the application processor to the display device or the camera, offers advantages as the physical layer.

The MIPI (Mobile Industry Processor Interface) alliance is a non-profit organization that establishes standards for hardware and software interfaces in mobile devices. Its vision is to develop the world’s most comprehensive standard set of interface specifications for mobile and mobile influenced products which will maximize design reuse, drive innovation, reduce time to market and will help in interoperability of products from various companies.

MIPI D’Phy is a physical serial data communication layer on which the protocols like CSI (Camera Serial Interface), DSI (Display Serial Interface) runs. It physically connects the camera sensor to the application processor (for CSI) and application processor to the display device (for DSI) as shown in the figure above.

D’Phy is a high speed, low power, source synchronous physical layer which is best suited for power hungry battery operated devices due to its power efficient design. It includes in it both the high speed and low power modules which helps in achieving power efficiency. The payload data (image data) uses the high speed modules whereas the control and status information is send (between camera/display device and the application processor) with the help of low power modules(utilizing low frequency signals). It has a peculiar ability of sending the high speed and low power data in the single packet burst. The low power modules help in achieving power savings and the high speed modules help in achieving the much needed higher bandwidth requirement for the High definition picture quality data signals.

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