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Effective speckle reduction method based on a rotating ball lens

Conference Paper · November 2020

DOI: 10.1117/12.2575729

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 Effective Speckle Reduction Method Based on a Rotating Ball Lens
Linxiao Deng, Yuwei Fang, Yuhua Yang, Tianhao Dong, Chun Gu, and Lixin Xu 
Department of Optics and Optical Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China,
Hefei, Anhui 230026, P. R. China

ABSTRACT

A novel design for speckle reduction based on a rotating ball lens is investigated. In addition, a standardized speckle
measurement method is also developed and the parameters mainly accord with characteristics of human eye. This method
could open up an avenue to the practical speckle measurement application.

Keywords: Speckle reduction, Ball lens, Human eye, Angle diversity.

1. INTRODUCTION

The laser as a light source in displays can provide superior color gamut, high brightness, high optical efficiency, and long
lifetime [1-4]. However, one of the most serious problems for laser projection is speckle, which deteriorates the image quality.
In consideration of speckle caused by high coherence, these techniques include suppressing spatial and temporal
coherence of laser [6]. In some studies [1, 5], similar methods are called angle and wavelength diversity. Besides, some studies
use a diffuser [2] in the spatial light path to suppress the coherence of laser. Nevertheless, such diffuser will add to extra
light consumption.
In this paper, an effective speckle reduction method based on a rotating ball lens is proposed and demonstrated. The
utilization of this lens in a practical laser projection system can vastly reduce the speckle with multiple speckle reduction
mechanisms and meanwhile achieves less light loss compared with the method of adding a diffuser. Besides, according to
the previous procedure outlined in S. Roelandt’s study [3], a standardized speckle measurement method based on human
eye characteristics is proposed. In detail, a specific measuring system with a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera is set
to make accurate, fast and objective measurement.

2. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF LASER SPECKLE

2.1 Definition of speckle contrast

The severity of speckle phenomenon is obtained by the speckle contrast as follows [4]:

𝜎𝐼 √<𝐼 2 >−<𝐼>2
𝐶= = ,
𝐼 <𝐼>
where 𝜎𝐼 is the standard deviation of the light intensity I. Sometimes the speckle contrast is multiplied by 100% for a
unified unit. In a projection system, the speckle must be reduced to a contrast value below 4% [3] to eliminate the annoying
spots observed by human eyes.
2.2 Statistical properties of Integrated speckle
In the experiment, when the speckle size is so tiny that multiple granules fill the same pixel in the detector, thus the speckle
contrast is reduced in spatial integration. In other words, the value depends on the average speckle size and detector’s pixel
size. Our measurement setup includes a chromatic CCD camera with the pixel size 𝐴𝑝 of 4.4 × 4.4 μm2. The distance
between the circular clear aperture of 3.2 mm and CCD chip is 17.21 mm. In addition, the human average cone size is
about 5.24 μm2. This mismatch of the pixel size 𝐴𝑝 has to be compensated [3]. Therefore, the measured speckle contrast


Corresponding author: [email protected]
must be multiplied with a compensating factor. In consideration of the central wavelength of our practical laser source, the
value is 1.34 for red, 1.43 for green, and 1.50 for blue.
2.3 Speckle reduction by the ball lens
The ball lens is driven by a motor. It should be noted that its rotating shaft slightly deviates from the center of the ball lens.
Fig. 1 illustrates the details of rotation and a specific beam is plotted to show the beam modulation with rotation. When
the center of the ball lens goes through O1, O2, O3, and O4, its focus correspondingly passes O1’, O2’, O3’, and O4’. This
leads to an optical path difference between different beams of light, which suppresses the spatial coherence of the incident
beam and thus reduces speckle.

Fig. 1. Rotating process of the ball lens. On account of the deviation of the rotating shaft, the focus of the ball lens changes with
its rotation. A denotes the rotating shaft, s = 0.5 mm denotes the deviation distance from the ball center, and the radius of the
ball lens is 5.0 mm.

3. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

Table 1. Laser diode

Type Red Green Blue

Central wavelength (nm) 638 520 455

Power (W) 3.1 2.0 2.5

Fig. 2. The schematic layout of the preliminary experimental setup. R, G, and B represent Red, Green, and Blue.
Our experimental setup is shown in Fig. 2, which is composed of the projection system, the screen, and the measuring
system.
The details of the tailored laser diodes are shown in table 1. For a projection system, the multi-mode fibers (MMFs)
and combiner are used to combine three beams from RGB light sources into one beam. The projecting distance is fixed to
2.4 m and the shooting distance is 1.25 m. Besides, the projecting light is vertical to a common white matte screen, which
has a view angle of 150° and a peak gain of 0.85.
To record the image on the screen, a specific measuring system based on human eye characteristics is established
with a CCD camera. The chip is made by SONY. The focus tunable lens [7] is made by Optotune. A neutral density filter
(NDF) is used to ensure that the light intensity becomes a proper value so the CCD camera has a linear response. Moreover,
to avoid recording CCD’s shadow on the screen, the shooting angle is adjusted to a tiny value and thus the shooting
direction is still approximately vertical to the screen.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The voltage of the motor is changed to adjust the rotating speed of the ball lens. Peculiarly, the motor will not start to work
until the voltage reach 0.4 V. In Fig. 3, when the voltage is lower than 0.4 V, the speckle contrast is not a constant. This
may result from the slight instability of the laser source and slight vibration of screen. While the motor starts to rotate, the
speckle contrast is rapidly reduced. In detail, the original speckle contrast is 20.99% (R), 19.10% (G), and 18.61% (B) at
0 V. When the motor voltage is 5 V, the value is 11.81% (R), 11.01% (G), and 11.44% (B).

Fig. 3. The speckle reduction effect depends on different motor voltages with different laser sources. The motor will not start to
rotate until the voltage reach 0.4 V.
It is worth noting that when the motor voltage is lower than 4 V, the light spot will oscillate on the screen, which
deteriorates the image quality. In view of the nominal voltage of the motor is 5 V, the speckle contrast under this condition
is used to calculate the speckle reduction factor 𝑅𝛺𝑟𝑜𝑡 [1], which is 1.78 for red, 1.73 for green, and 1.63 for blue. For
different color of beams, the ball lens shows effective speckle reduction. Due to the motor voltage having a nonlinear
influence on the rotating speed, if the motor voltage axis is changed to the rotating speed axis, the curve may become more
gentle. If the ball lens is combined with multiple other speckle reduction mechanisms, the speckle can be vastly reduced
in the practical projection system.

5. CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, we have fabricated a ball lens for speckle reduction. The speckle reduction factor through angle diversity is
demonstrated, which is 1.78 for red, 1.73 for green, and 1.63 for blue. In addition, a standardized measurement system for
speckle contrast is presented to ensure the results appropriate for human eye characteristics, which guides for practical
speckle measurement application. In the future, our system can enable the integration of high power laser module with low
speckle contrast, which could find potential application for high lumen laser projection.
Acknowledgments
 This work is supported by National Key Research and Development program of China (2016YFB0401901) and Major
science and technology special project in Anhui (17030901001).

Reference
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