Design of three-dimensional imaging lidar optical system for large field of view scanning

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) lidar has been widely used in various fields. The MEMS scanning system is one of its most important components, while the limitation of scanning angle is the main obstacle to improve the demerit for its application in various fields. In this paper, a folded large field of view scanning optical system is proposed. The structure and parameters of the system are determined by theoretical derivation of ray tracing. The optical design software Zemax is used to design the system. After optimization, the final structure performs well in collimation and beam expansion. The results show that the scan angle can be expanded from ±5° to ±26.5°, and finally the parallel light scanning is realized. The spot diagram at a distance of 100 mm from the exit surface shows that the maximum radius of the spot is 0.506 mm with a uniformly distributed spot. The maximum radius of the spot at 100 m is 19 cm, and the diffusion angle is less than 2 mrad. The energy concentration in the spot range is greater than 90% with a high system energy concentration, and the parallelism is good. This design overcomes the shortcoming of the small mechanical scanning angle of the MEMS lidar, and has good performance in collimation and beam expansion. It provides a design method for large-scale application of MEMS lidar.