Rambus Expands its Lensless Imaging to Thermal Band

Rambus blog posts Patrick Gill proposal to extend the company's lensless imageing idea to thermal imagers. Presented in June 2013, Lensless smart sensor (LSS) technology is designed to capture data rich images using a low-cost phase grating.

"Using traditional methods, wide-angle lens system designs require multiple elements, which mean they won’t work well for thermal sensing. Practically, very few affordable focusing thermal systems offer more than about a 50-degree field of view. However, a lensless smart sensor (LSS) manufactured from a single thermal diffraction grating could capture intelligible signals from a larger range of incident angles – perhaps greater than 100 degrees. In fact, a large field of view combined with the higher selling price of thermal imaging systems (compared to their visible-light counterparts) could mean that wide-angle thermal sensing will be one of the first commercially advantageous applications of LSS technology," said Gill.

Thanks to DSSB for the link!