Components: LED Light Engines With Fiber Panels Boost Brightness Levels

March 3, 2005

By combining one or more high-power, high-current-driven LEDs with the company's woven or UniGlo fiber-optic panels, a new modular light engine dramatically increases brightness levels over a wide and flat area. The LEDs are the company's Luxeon III Star and Luxeon V units. A special collimating lens captures the LED light's output and then focuses it on the fiber-optic panel, making brightness levels 20 to 50 times greater than normally possible. An aluminum housing acts as a heatsink. A light engine with a single Luxeon III Star LED illuminating a 3- by 5-in. panel costs from $10 to $50 in OEM lots.

Lumitex Inc. www.lumitex.com; (800) 969-5483

About the Author

Roger Allan

Roger Allan is an electronics journalism veteran, and served as Electronic Design's Executive Editor for 15 of those years. He has covered just about every technology beat from semiconductors, components, packaging and power devices, to communications, test and measurement, automotive electronics, robotics, medical electronics, military electronics, robotics, and industrial electronics. His specialties include MEMS and nanoelectronics technologies. He is a contributor to the McGraw Hill Annual Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He is also a Life Senior Member of the IEEE and holds a BSEE from New York University's School of Engineering and Science. Roger has worked for major electronics magazines besides Electronic Design, including the IEEE Spectrum, Electronics, EDN, Electronic Products, and the British New Scientist. He also has working experience in the electronics industry as a design engineer in filters, power supplies and control systems.

After his retirement from Electronic Design Magazine, He has been extensively contributing articles for Penton’s Electronic Design, Power Electronics Technology, Energy Efficiency and Technology (EE&T) and Microwaves RF Magazine, covering all of the aforementioned electronics segments as well as energy efficiency, harvesting and related technologies. He has also contributed articles to other electronics technology magazines worldwide.

He is a “jack of all trades and a master in leading-edge technologies” like MEMS, nanolectronics, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, military electronics, biometrics, implantable medical devices, and energy harvesting and related technologies.