Beam homogenization structure for a laser illuminator design based on diode laser beam combining technology

Abstract

With the rapid development of laser technology, laser as the light source of night vision illuminating can realize long-dis-tance and clear imaging, which has been widely used in laser active illuminating field. A high-power diode laser with a wavelength of 808 nm was designed as the laser active illuminating source, and the output power of no less than 100 W was obtained by spatial beam multiplexing, polarization multiplexing, and high efficiency fiber coupling techniques. In view of the beam homogenization of illuminating source, a novel beam homogenization system based on waveguide is proposed in this work. A square spot with a horizontal divergence angle of 40°, a vertical divergence angle of 10°, and an illuminating power ratio of 4:1 was obtained by a collimating lens. Comparing with the traditional circular illuminating beam, the square illuminating beam can match the illuminating angle of CCD camera better, and the energy utilization rate is higher. In addition, by optimizing the structure of waveguide and collimating lens, the illuminating angle can be changed to meet the illuminating requirements under different conditions theoretically.