Compact, High Intensity, Low Cost, Free Standing Illumination Sources

The Army needs high power light sources for high speed photography. The cameras with frame rates of million frames/sec or higher frame rates are increasingly being used for recording of fast events such as impact of a projectile on Army platforms such as tanks and APCs or IED blasts. To image fast events from a distance of 50 to 100 meters, or inside an MRAP vehicle, high power illumination sources are needed. This is because of the fact that with higher frame rates the number of available photons decreases proportionately. For example, the number of available photons per pixel per frame for million frames per second will be approximately 33,000 times lower than 30 frames per second rate. For using the high speed cameras, Army needs an illumination intensity of 300,000 lumens for a duration of at least 30 seconds from a small source of 6x6x6"size including the batteries. Princeton Optronics proposes to use VCSELs (vertical cavity surface emitting laser), which is a new type of high power diode laser, to develop the high power illuminator for the Army. VCSEL technology has a number of advantages over LEDs and edge emitting diode lasers for the illumination applications. In phase I, we would do a study the problem which will result in development of a design for the illuminator which can be implemented in phase II.