Design and simulation of a new compound eye with a wide field of view

Put forward a compound eye possessing a wide field of view (FOV), which is characterized by small and compact structure. Based on the total reflection theory, the ommatidia on the edge of the compound eye are designed with free-form surface prism, which enables the light beams reflected inside the ommatidium. This contributes to ommatidia of small size and distortion decrease of the marginal ommatidia, finally image quality of the marginal FOV is dramatically enhanced and the FOV of the compound eye is broadened obviously. The size of the designed compound eye is Φ12.2mm×3mm, the FOV increases to 180º. However, the image distortion whitin the entire FOV is smaller than 25%. The MTF is still larger than 0.1 even at the frequency of 100lp/mm. The simulation of the proposed compound eye structure is conducted using the LightTools. Results indicate that there is no crosstalk between adjacent ommatidia and it can image with high quality.