Design of illumination and projection optics for projectors with single digital micromirror devices

We present a new optical system design for a projector with a single digital micromirror device (Texas Instruments Digital Micromirror Device) that improves on previous designs in terms of optical efficiency, uniformity, and contrast while yielding a low-profile and compact system. A rod integrator is incorporated with a compact relay system to maximize light efficiency and to increase illumination uniformity. The uniformity achieved by the optimized optical system was calculated to be 94%. In addition, this unique light-separator design has dual output channels to increase the image contrast by steering the off-state light away from the projection lens. This projector design provides very efficient light utilization, and we discuss how the geometrical optical efficiency of the system can be boosted to approach the theoretical maximum.