Atsushi MINATO¹ and Nobuo SUGIMOTO²

¹Faculty of Engineering, Ibaraki University, 4-12-1, Naka-Narusawa-machi, Hitachi, Ibaraki, 316 Japan, ²National Institute for Environmental Studies, 16-2, Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305 Japan

(Received July 31, 1996; Accepted November 1, 1996)

An acute retroreflector having dihedral angles of 45, 60 and 90 deg exactly reflects incident rays in the opposite direction. Beam pattern or wave front of the reflected light of the acute retroreflector can be controlled by tuning dihedral angles. We present here a new method for calculating the reflected wave front of the acute retroreflector, in which the wave front is calculated with high accuracy and in a shorter calculation time than by the conventional ray trace method.

Key words : optical design, acute retroreflector, laser ranging, tuned dihedral angle, wave front