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Optical design for uniform scanning in MEMS-based 3D imaging lidar

Article in Applied Optics · March 2015

DOI: 10.1364/AO.54.002219

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 Optical design for uniform scanning in
MEMS-based 3D imaging lidar

Xiaobao Lee* and Chunhui Wang

National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Tunable Laser, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China
*Corresponding author: lixiaobao200801@[Link]

Received 22 September 2014; revised 23 January 2015; accepted 30 January 2015;

posted 30 January 2015 (Doc. ID 223516); published 12 March 2015

This paper proposes a method for the optical system design of uniform scanning in a larger scan field
of view (FOV) in 3D imaging lidar. The theoretical formulas are derived for the design scheme. By
employing the optical design software ZEMAX, a foldaway uniform scanning optical system based on
MEMS has been designed, and the scanning uniformity and spot size of the system on the target
plane, perpendicular to optical axis, are analyzed and discussed. Results show that the designed system
can scan uniformly within the FOV of 40° × 40° with small spot size for the target at distance of
about 100 m. © 2015 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (280.3640) Lidar; (220.0220) Optical design and fabrication; (220.3620) Lens system
design; (220.4830) Systems design.
[Link]

1. Introduction Thus, several ways of optically extending the

A new generation of 3D imaging lidar systems with optical scan angle of the MEMS have been proposed
high imaging resolution, high ranging accurate, and during the research. For example, Niclass and co-
high frame rate is heading toward the direction of workers [11,12] used three laser diodes, structuring
miniaturization, light weight, portability, and low a linear array and a larger positive lens in front of a
cost [1–3] and has been applied widely in the civilian MEMS mirror to extend the scan field of view (FOV)
and military fields such as laser ranging, topography, by three times up to 45° on a horizontal direction in
architectural drawing, environmental monitoring, the target space. This extended-angle method needs
vehicle driving navigation [4,5], battlefield environ- more than one laser diode. Besides, some other
mental surveillance, unmanned ground vehicle nav- researchers put a fish-eye-type lens group directly
igation, etc. [6,7]. In these 3D imaging lidar systems, behind the MEMS to extend the optical scan angle
the MEMS scanning mirror has been considered one [13]. The shortage of this method is that there is a
of the important components because of its huge huge f -theta distortion on the vertical axis target
advantages, including fast scanning speed, flexibil- plane. In order to correct the barrel distortion, the
ity, low power consumption, etc. [8,9]. However, the function of actuation voltage in single two-axis
mechanical tilt angle of a MEMS mirror is too small MEMS mirror scanning will become more complex.
and is often limited to a few or 10 deg. For example, A potentially better way is to amplify the angle of
the single two-axis MEMS mirror with an aperture of the laser beam by putting two lenses, namely, a pos-
1.7 mm has a maximum optical scan angle of only itive and a negative lens, in front and back of the
about
8° [10], which is obviously not enough for MEMS mirror [1–3], thus, structuring a telescope-
a 3D imaging lidar system. type extending-angle optical system. With this
scheme, the FOV can be increased from an optical
scan angle as small as 6° to 40°. However, at least
1559-128X/15/092219-05$15.00/0 two disadvantages exist in this simple lens group:
© 2015 Optical Society of America (1) the laser beam passing through the negative lens

20 March 2015 / Vol. 54, No. 9 / APPLIED OPTICS 2219

is divergent. Unlike the near target with small spot mechanical tilt of the MEMS mirror, the laser beam
size, for a far target at a distance of tens of meters, reflects off the MEMS mirror with a scan angle twice
hundreds of meters, or even more from the scanning as that of tilt. The emergent beam (denoted by 1 in
system, the spot size will become bigger, resulting in Fig. 1) travels through an image telecentric f -theta
the lessened energy per unit area on the target lens and then projects parallel or approximate paral-
surface, decreased ratio of the backscattering laser lel onto the negative lens for angle amplification.
energy to the total energy of the transmitted beam, It should be pointed out that the f -theta lens is
and lower signal-to-noise, which made the back designed to be an image telecentric optics, the pur-
signal difficult to receive. (2) Generally, the pattern pose of which is to ensure the main ray parallels to
distribution of the scan beam on the target surface the optical axis, which will be beneficial for scan
is nonuniform, usually being sparse in the middle angle later extending of the negative lens. The
and dense on both ends, which has poor influence image height h on the first surface of the negative
on the image quality. lens group and the incidental angle θi meets the
If the function of the MEMS actuation voltage is relationship:
requested to be in simple form (e.g., linear function),
and a uniform scan angle is also to be obtained, the h  f 0 · θi ; (1)
relationship between actuation voltage and MEMS 0
where f is the focal length of the f -theta lens; the
tilt angle should be linear. Fortunately, the gimbal- emergent angle of the beam θ0o from the negative lens
less electrostatic comb-drive single two-axis MEMS and the incident angle θi satisfy
mirror can deflect linearly versus the actuation volt-
age. It means that the MEMS mirror can deflect uni- h f0
tan θ0o  0  ·θ ; (2)
formly, but the scan angle is merely small, and the f fn i
nonuniform distribution of the spot size in target
plane still exits. where the f n is the focal length of the negative lenses
In order to resolve the problem of small scan angle group. We denoted θout  tan θ0o  f 0 · θi ∕f n , called
and nonuniform distribution of the pattern in the tar-
get plane, obtaining a uniform scan pattern distribu-
tion of the spot size in the target plane to improve the
image quality, a feasible method is to add an f -theta
lens to extend the scan angle optical system. This
method, however, is often used for laser marking
machines, engraving areas, etc., where the focal
length of the f -theta lens is commonly a few hundred
millimeters order of magnitude. It is not convenient
to design an f -theta lens directly for ranging and
imaging lidar application when the target is scanned MEMS
at a distance of hundreds of meters or even more. fn
In this paper, based on the single two-axis MEMS
mirror, which can scan uniformly within limited
FOV, we propose a MEMS-based expending scan (a)
angle method to realize uniform scanning and design
a corresponding scan optical system for 3D imaging
lidar with its FOV reaching up to at least 40° × 40°, 3
then evaluate the spot size and the uniformity of the 5 1
scanning beam when passing through the system. 4
For ease of expression, we agreed (below) that the ter-
minology scan angle refers to optical scan angle rather 6 Y
1
than mechanical tilt angle, unless it is specified. , h
θi θ0
2
2. Design Scheme and Theoretical Analysis MEMS
As stated earlier, the positive and negative lens set in fn
front and back, respectively, of the MEMS mirror can
amplify the scan angle. Further, if the scanning beam ,
can be focused onto the image focal plane of the neg- p L
ative lens, the laser beams leaving off the negative L
lens will become parallel ones, as shown in Fig. 1(a). (b)
Thus, for simplicity, the laser beam can be repre- Fig. 1. Scheme of MEMS-based scanning. (a) Demonstration of
sented by the center ray. The scheme of uniform scan- the case for the emergent laser to be a collimated beam. (b) Sche-
ning optics is shown in Fig. 1(b): A collimated laser matic diagram of linear scan for the main ray: 1, main ray; 2,
beam goes through the positive lens group and MEMS mirror; 3, positive lens group; 4, equivalent schematic dia-
then projects on to the MEMS mirror. Due to the gram of the f -theta lens; 5, negative lens group; 6, target plane.

2220 APPLIED OPTICS / Vol. 54, No. 9 / 20 March 2015

the efficient scan angle. Obviously, it varies linearly amplitude (or intensity) as a function of the radial
versus the incident angle θi . If we choose the focal pupil coordinate and is the same in both transverse
length f 0 and f n properly, making sure that f 0 is directions. The beam amplitude is normalized to
greater than f n or f 0 is a multiple of f n, the amplifi- unity at the center of the pupil in ZEMAX, while
cation of the scan angle can be successfully realized. at the other points in the entrance pupil is given by
The vertical dimension Y of the emergent beam on
2
the target plane can be given by Aρ  e−Gρ ; (5)

Y  L0  f n  · tan θ0i ; (3) where G and ρ are the apodization factor and the nor-
malized pupil coordinate at the stop surface, respec-
where L0 is the distance of the target from the cardi- tively. Therefore, when G is equal to 1, the beam
nal plane of the negative lens. If we let L  L0  f n , amplitude falls to the 1∕e value (the intensity falls
called the efficient distance of the target, we obtain to 1∕e2 value, about 13% of the peak) at the margin
of the entrance pupil. In this design, we chose G  1.
Y  L · θout ; (4) The focal length of the positive lens group should
be greater than that of the f -theta lens in order to
which is a linear scanning equation, demonstrating ensure that the image plane of the f -theta lens is
that the image height of the scanning beam on the within the focal length of the positive lens group
target plane perpendicular to the optical axis is pro- and in front of the negative lens group. The focal
portional to the scan angle. It means that the spot length parameters are listed in Table 1.
size distribution on the target plane is uniform when Since the maximum mechanical tilt angle of the
the scan angle varies uniformly; that is, the MEMS MEMS mirror we used is
4°, correspondingly, the
mirror can complete uniform scanning the target for scan angle of the beam reflected off the MEMS mir-
imaging lidar. ror is twice as that; that is, the maximum scan angle
θi will be
8° in this simulation. The focal length
3. ZEMAX Implementation of the f -theta lens is set to be 50 mm, as shown in
Table 1, so the maximum image height on the f -theta
A. Design Specification lens image plane is easily obtained to be 6.98 mm.
After optimizing, the relative distortion [17] of the
This system is designed for 3D imaging lidar scan- f -theta lens, which is given by
ning with a wave length of 1550 nm, which is a fold-
away scanning type and can scan uniformly based on tan θ − θ
a MEMS mirror. The maximum scan angle is at least DT  × 100%; (6)
tan θ
40° per axis; the spot size of the laser beam is con-
fined to be less than 20 cm at the distance of about is less than 0.03%.
100 m. When the design and optimization of the preposed
positive lens group, f -theta lens, and extended-angle
B. Design of the System lens group is completed, respectively, the whole sys-
The mechanical tilt angle of the two-axis MEMS we tem can be built up by combining the group with the
used can be almost identical in the x and y axis; for MEMS mirror and adjusting the distance between
simplicity, in the following design of the 2D scan sys- the f -theta lens and negative lens group to minimize
tem, we only discuss the case of one axis (the y axis, the spot size on the image plane. The design data of
for example). The other is as same as that. lenses in the system are listed in Table 2, while the
The whole scanning system consists of four compo- whole design sketch is shown in Fig. 2.
nents: preposed positive lens group, MEMS mirror,
f -theta lens, and the negative lens group. The posi- 4. Results and Discussion
tive lens, on one hand, is to precompensate for the The Gaussian beam with the entrance pupil of 1 mm
beam divergence resulting from the use of a negative travels through the whole scanning system we de-
lens for angle amplification; on the other hand, it can signed; its maximum scan angle obtained from ray
focus the collimated laser beam completely on the ef- tracing simulation is given by
ficient aperture of the MEMS mirror. Based on the
theoretical analysis, we trace the rays by the stan- θ0o max  20.22°; (7)
dard optical design software ZEMAX, which contains
features and tools to design, optimize, and analyze while, for the efficient emergent angle θout , which
any optical system [14–16]. varies linearly versus the angle θi before extending,
In the ZEMAX lens data editor, the “entrance pu- its maximum value is θout max  tan θ0o max  21.12°.
pil” is set to be 1 mm because the aperture of the
MEMS we used is 1.7 mm (Mirrocle Technologies). Table 1. Focal Length Parameters of the Designed Lenses
The apodization type we chose is to be Gaussian, Positive Lens f -Theta Lens Negative Lens
which imparts an amplitude variation over the pupil
that is Gaussian in form [14,15]. The “apodization f ∕mm f 0 ∕mm f n ∕mm
100 50 −20.38
factor” refers to the rate of decrease of the beam

20 March 2015 / Vol. 54, No. 9 / APPLIED OPTICS 2221

 Table 2. Design Data of the MEMS-Based Foldaway Uniform 24
Scanning System θo
22

Scanning angle after expender /degree

theorical value θo=2.45*θi
Surface Radius of Surface Diameter/ 20
fitting line θo=2.6965*θi −0.4889
No. Curvature/mm Separation/mm Glass mm
18
1 32.140 6.5 BAFN10 25.4 16
2 −38.020 1.8 SFL6 25.4
14
3 93.540 23.5 25.4
4 Inifinity −30 MIRROR 20 12
5a 19.776 −4.001 F_SILICA 16 10
6a −67.421 −4.001 16 8
7a 245.989 −4.0 SF18 16
6
8a 33.626 −1.298 16
9a −124.929 −4.002 SF18 16 4
10a 43.486 −6.968 16 2
11a 13.530 −1.50 N-BAF10 15
0
12a −14.250 −3.5 N-SF6HT 20 0 0.8 1.6 2.4 3.2 4 4.8 5.6 6.4 7.2 8
13a −87.90 −1.00E  005 20 Scanning angle before expender θ /degree
i
a
Curvature radius and separation of surface 5 to 13 are chosen to Fig. 3. Scan angle θout after extending varies with the scan angle
be opposite of the original value, just because they are behind the θi before extending, where the black dot represents the theoretical
mirror represented the MEMS in ZEMAX. value from Eq. (2); the pink circle represents the actual scan angle
of the system. Fitting equation is y  p1  x  p2 , with the param-
It is reasonable to be greater than θ0o max . Whereas the eters obtained from fitting p1  2.6965, p2  −0.4889.
efficient emergent angle in theory expressed as
θout theory  f 0 ∕f n  · θi  50∕20.38 × 8°  19.63° is the result of linear fitting, the linear relationship
less than both the maximum scan angle θ0o max and between θo and θi is obvious. It means that the scan
the maximum efficient scan angle θout max , the angle of the beam comes from the whole optical
reason is that, in the actual system we designed, system increase (or decrease) uniformly as the
the image height of the beam in the cardinal plane MEMS tilts uniformly; thus, the uniform scanning
of the negative lens group is not identical with that of the beam on the target plane has been realized
of a perfect optical system but is greater than that of successfully.
the perfect doublet lens.
B. Spot Size at Target Plane
A. Evaluation of the Uniform Scanning Figure 4 shows the spot sizes of the scanning beam in
It is necessary to evaluate the uniformity of the the y direction on the vertical axis target plane at dis-
scanning spot size distribution on the target plane tance of about 100 m with the scan angle θi at differ-
perpendicular to optical axis. The emergent angle ent values, while the x direction is 0°, the scale is
tangent value, which is tan θ0o  θout, is calculated 20 cm. Figure 4 shows that the spot size of the beam
using the ZEMAX analysis–calculation–ray trace decreases gradually as the scan angle increases; the
tool for different scan angles in the target plane. maximum value of the spot size is 12 cm when the
The variation of the efficient scan angle θout versus MEMS scan angle equals to 0°; while the minimum
the scan angle θi is revealed in Fig. 3. In order to
investigate the linearity of angle amplification, we
have to fit the simulation data. The theoretical
amplification factor of the MEMS mirror scan angle,
denoted by K, is K  f 0 ∕f n  50∕20.38  2.45; never-
theless, as shown in Fig. 3, the amplification factor
of the practical scan angle θout is about 2.6965, which
a little greater than the theoretical value. From

Fig. 4. Spot size with different scan angle θi in the target plane
perpendicular to the optical axis at distance of about 100 m. The
scale is 2 × 105 μm, where the three lines from the upper left to
lower right are the cases corresponding to the scan angle θi being
(0°,0°), (0°,0.8°), (0°,1.6°), (0°,2.4°); (0°,3.2°), (0°,4.0°), (0°,4.8°),
Fig. 2. Design sketch of the whole scanning system. (0°,5.6°); and (0°,6.4°), (0°,7.2°), (0°,8.0°), 0°; −8.0°, respectively.

2222 APPLIED OPTICS / Vol. 54, No. 9 / 20 March 2015

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