Measured and Predicted Speckle Correlation from Diffractive Metasurface Diffusers

Speckles are inherent in structured laser-based light projection using diffractive optics such as metasurfaces or diffractive optical elements (DOEs). One application of structured light is to provide illumination for machine vision and depth sensing. This is particularly attractive for mobile or low-power applications, where metasurfaces provide a compact, customizable solution, which can furthermore reach extreme field of illuminations. However, the speckles might limit detection capabilities by, e.g., lowering the detection range or providing false results. In this work, we present a series of measurements with matching simulations on a 70 × 50 degrees diffractive diffuser using different light sources (varying divergence angles + VCSEL array) to quantify the impact of speckles. We observe a qualitative agreement in speckle correlation between the measurements and the simulations and explain, in part using cross-correlation for analysis, why we do not observe the same speckle pattern between the measurements and the simulations. By performing extra simulations, we conclude that by only changing the light source, there is a limit to the reduction of the speckle contrast which, we can achieve, and, to reduce it further, alternative approaches such as changing the design method of the diffractive diffuser must be harnessed.