Multitarget compounding technique based on dimpled mirror

The multitarget compounding technique is key in an infrared hardware-in-the-loop simulation system. In this study, the beam-broadening theory and carefully designed experiments are presented to analyze a multitarget compounding system based on a dimpled mirror. By paraxial approximation of geometrical optics, the expression of broadened beamwidth of a dimpled-mirror two-mirror three-reflection concentric system was obtained as the function of system parameters. A multitarget compounding setup was designed and experiments were performed. Excellent matching results were achieved between the beam-width theory and the experiments. Experimental results demonstrated that the beam-broadening theory is creditable and suitable to design the multitarget compounding system. The theory and experiments are beneficial to the future development and implementation of multitarget compounding technique.