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Apparatus and method for improved illumination area fill

  • US 7,581,855 B2
  • Filed: 09/13/2008
  • Issued: 09/01/2009
  • Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2004
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method for illuminating a surface comprising:

  • providing a reflector having an aperture and a shape defined by a three dimensional reflector surface;

    radiating light from a light source whose intensity varies as a function of the angles of the light rays radiated from the light source in a three dimensional radiation pattern, andreflecting light from the reflector, the reflector being proximate to the light source, defining a system angle by its aperture and allowing directly radiated energy to propagate from the light source through the aperture of the reflector to the surface to provide a directly radiated energy distribution pattern on the surface to be illuminated defined as the illuminated surface,where providing the reflector comprises defining the shape derived from a transfer function,which has as inputs;

    the three dimensional radiation pattern of the light source;

    beam parameters, including a light source-to-illuminated surface distance and beam diameter;

    system parameters of the reflector including reflector size and aperture size of the reflector; and

    a user selected composite energy distribution on the illuminated surface;

    and which has as outputs;

    an amount of directly radiated energy propagating through the aperture of the reflector; and

    a remainder of the total available radiated energy from the light source less the energy of the light directly radiating to the illuminated surface through the reflector aperture; and

    a calculated position and orientation of each point on the reflector as a function of angle needed to provide the user selected composite energy distribution on the illuminated surface, which calculation defines the shape of the reflector necessary to provide a reflected energy pattern to overlay the directly radiated energy pattern to form the user selected composite energy distribution on the illuminated surface.

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