Image steering with multi‐domain field of view expansion by MEMS SLM for near‐to‐eye AR display engines

Abstract Near‐to‐eye displays (NED) require a large field of view (FOV), high resolution, and a small form factor that requires a small display size. These design parameters are often mutually coupled, making it difficult to create a system that satisfies all three at once. Moreover, the FOV in the NED combiner is typically restricted by the refractive index (RI), limiting the use of low‐cost glass and polymer materials for image guides. In this paper, the problem: an image transfer that exceeds RI‐limited FOV and reduces display size without sacrificing the resolution is demonstrated by multi‐domain multiplexed image transfer. In the proposed techniques, we leverage time‐wavelength and diffractive multiplexing to reduce a display size by factors of five while achieving 60 degrees FOV transferred over a commercially available 30 degrees FOV geometric waveguide, and maintaining the 32.26 pixels/degree resolution.