An Ultra-High-Speed LED Array Driver Circuit for Structured Illumination

Structured light devices are commonly used in many measurements by emitting certain illuminating patterns on objects or scenes, enabling the acquisition of object information. To achieve high-speed and high-accuracy measurements, researchers are focusing on improving the performance of structured light devices. LEDs, with their fast response times, have great potential in high-speed structured light devices. However, the current LED array driver circuits face challenges to balance high power and high speed. In this article, we propose a driver circuit and a pattern display scheme that support high-power LED arrays to refresh structured light patterns at ultra-high rates. We have fabricated a prototype of the driver and used it to drive a 128 × 128 LED chip array. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed driver outputs over 40 W and supports the LED chip array refresh patterns at rates of up to 25 MHz, which is approximately 1000 times faster than the fastest commercially available structured light device (i.e., the digital micromirror device). The ultra-high-speed LED array device based on the proposed driver can be applied in computational ghost imaging, structured illumination microscopy, Fourier ptychographic imaging and other imaging fields.