Omnidirectional illuminator for panoramic viewing systems

The usual infrared illuminators available nowadays for cameras are directional illuminators. The concept of omnidirectional viewing is using a 360° panoramic camera, which obviously will require 360° infrared illuminator in order to allow its usage also in lowlight, nighttime and even in darkness conditions. The illuminator has been implemented using high power infrared LEDs and one of the biggest challenges was the thermal management, because the power dissipation is increasing with the optical power increase. The aim was to achieve the highest optical power of LEDs in safe thermal operation conditions.