Fiber Optic Development For Use On The Fiber Optic Helmet Mounted Display

Melvin L. Thomas; Walter P. Siegmund; Steven E. Antos; Richard M. Robinson

doi:10.1117/12.960903

5 September 1989 Fiber Optic Development For Use On The Fiber Optic Helmet Mounted Display

Melvin L. Thomas, Walter P. Siegmund, Steven E. Antos, Richard M. Robinson

Proceedings Volume 1116, Helmet-Mounted Displays; (1989) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.960903
Event: SPIE 1989 Technical Symposium on Aerospace Sensing, 1989, Orlando, FL, United States

Abstract

The Fiber Optic Helmet Mounted Display (FOHMD) developed by CAE for the US Air Force Human Resources Laboratory (AFHRL), requires very large format, coherant fiber optic cables. These cables must support the FOHMD's demanding modulation transfer function (MTF) requirements in full color and be flexible, durable, lightweight, and up to six feet long. These requirements have so constrained glass technology that conventional approaches are not capable of delivering the requisite performance. The cables currently used on FOHMD systems have alternating layers of inactive material to buffer linear arrays of multifibers so that a lighter weight 25 by 19 mm end size is achieved with 5 micron core size individual fibers. This skip-layer, multifiber approach delivers reasonable performance when using spectral multiplexing across the inactive layers. However, residual fixed pattern noise, broken multifibers, and inadequate resolution have reduced system performance. Because of the critical influence of the fiber optic cables on overall system performance, an alternative, but riskier process, is being explored. Several smaller experimental cables have been assembled using leachable, fused, multifibers arrayed in a hexagonal pattern. The inconspicuous mating of hexagonal elements should be possible now because of an order of magnitude improvement in cable drawing technology. Fused/leached fiber optic cables have the potential to provide image transmission capability equal to ten channels of the best available computer image generators. When coupled with chromatic enhancement to mask fixed pattern and broken fiber noise, the resulting MTF of the FOHMD optics would deliver a resolution equal to 1.5 arc minutes per pixel.

Citation Download Citation

Melvin L. Thomas, Walter P. Siegmund, Steven E. Antos, and Richard M. Robinson "Fiber Optic Development For Use On The Fiber Optic Helmet Mounted Display", Proc. SPIE 1116, Helmet-Mounted Displays, (5 September 1989); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.960903

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