Plane-focusing Fresnel lenses for oblique incidence of light beams

An algorithm for simulating parameters of microprismatic plane-focusing Fresnel lenses is proposed. An appropriate technology of manufacturing such lenses is developed. Such specialized lenses are more efficient for concentrating sunlight in photovoltaic modules of solar energetics compared to the traditional point-focusing Fresnel lenses. Plane-focusing optics is also useful for optical control systems with four-plane photodetectors for automatic moving objects tracking. This optics is typically used at normal light incidence onto photosensitive surfaces. However, lens focusing characteristics for oblique light incidence are different from the ones for normal incidence case. In this paper, the focusing characteristics of such lenses are obtained for oblique light incidence onto a registering surface. Specialized plane-focusing microprismatic lenses fabricated according to our simulation results are experimentally investigated using a collimated laser beam and computer modeling for the case of oblique light incidence.