Transform lens with a plurality of sliced lens segments
First Claim
1. A transform lens for use with a planar array of light emitting elements, wherein said planar array includes N rows and M columns of light emitting elements, which each output of an optical output signal, wherein N and M are integers, wherein said transform lens comprises:
- a plurality of sliced lens segments, each of which is aligned to capture and focus the optical output signals of a single column of light emitting elements, and outputting thereby M rows of focused optical signal spots, wherein each focused optical signal spot contains the optical output signals of a N light emitting elements in a particular column; and
a means for holding said plurality of sliced lens segments in place to collectively form said transform lens thereby.
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
A sliced transform lens is used to combine and focus the optical output signals of a planar M by N laser diode array onto M detector elements in a linear detector by displacing lens slices. A sliced transform lens is used to separate the composite image of the laser diode array on the detector plane into ten spots (400 emitters per spot) by displacing the lens slices relative to each other collimated He-Ne laser beam was used to examine the sliced transform lens and the linear detector array was used to measure the image sizes and the crosstalks between the images. The results show the minimum separation is approximately five detector spacings apart. The lens elements are cut from a bulk material (BK-7) and ground to desired thickness and parallelism. Then the elements are "glued" together with standard optical wax compound and ground to the prescribed focal length. THe lens slices are cut before grinding, hence the composite lens is symmetric and zero-curf configuration is preserved. This relaxes the collimation requirement of the incoming light to some extent. The lens is then polished and ready for application.
44 Citations
16 Claims
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1. A transform lens for use with a planar array of light emitting elements, wherein said planar array includes N rows and M columns of light emitting elements, which each output of an optical output signal, wherein N and M are integers, wherein said transform lens comprises:
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a plurality of sliced lens segments, each of which is aligned to capture and focus the optical output signals of a single column of light emitting elements, and outputting thereby M rows of focused optical signal spots, wherein each focused optical signal spot contains the optical output signals of a N light emitting elements in a particular column; and a means for holding said plurality of sliced lens segments in place to collectively form said transform lens thereby. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. A transform process for use with a planar array of light emitting elements, wherein said planar array includes N rows and M columns of light emitting elements, which each output an optical output signal, wherein N and M are integers, wherein said transform process comprises:
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combining the optical output signals of all of the rows of light emitting elements in each column of the planar array to produce thereby M combined optical signals; and focusing the M combined optical signals onto a linear array of detector elements to enable characteristics said planar array of light emitting elements to be measured by M detector elements. - View Dependent Claims (8)
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9. A transform lens system for use with a planar array of light emitting elements, wherein said planar array includes N rows and M columns of light emitting elements, which each output an optical output signal, wherein N and M are integers, wherein said transform lens system comprises:
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a means for extracting a sample of the optical output signals of said planar array of light emittinq elements to produce thereby samples of the optical output signals; a plurality of sliced lens segments, each of which is aligned to capture and focus the samples of the optical output signals of a single column of light emitting elements, and outputting thereby M rows of focused optical signal spots, wherein each focused optical signal spot contains the optical output signals of a N light emitting elements in a particular column; and a means for measuring the optical signal spots produced by said sliced lens segments to determine thereby characteristics of the optical output signals of planar array of light emitting elements. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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Specification