Ray tracing analysis of display illumination systems

Abstract

Most state-of-the-art commercial, industrial, and military display technologies require some type of backlight illumination. Optimization of such lighting systems with respect to brightness, uniformity, and viewing angle is critical to achieving technical specifications and overall performance of display applications. Considering the substantial cost and risk factors involved in developing advanced displays it becomes important to utilize superior design tools that accurately model the radiometric performance of illumination systems including the behavior of all optical components (quasi-homogeneous sources, optical films, micro-prisms, etc.). To this end, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) has been successfully using an internally developed design platform called R 2 T to perform radiometric ray tracing (R 2 T) of backlights and general lighting applications that incorporate non-Lambertian (elliptic) diffusers and other weakly diffracting optical components. For years POC has been involved in the design of illumination systems for advanced displays including manufacturing expertise in large size web replication of optical films and injection molding of microstructures for display technology.