Panel-integration of natural light and the related system of light guiding and illumination.

This Letter proposes an idea of a natural light illumination system by using a light collecting panel. The light collecting panel is coupled with a light guide followed by a specifically designed lens to achieve uniform illumination on a target screen. To assess the system specification, we build a primary model in three-dimensional modeling software and make ray tracing simulation based on a Monte Carlo algorithm. The simulation results show a relatively high efficiency of 41.41% for the entire system and achieve a high uniformity of more than 0.8 within the circular illumination area. (c) 2012 Optical Society of America