Zernike polynomials for photometric characterization of LEDs

We propose a method based on Zernike polynomials to characterize photometric quantities and descriptors of light emitting diodes (LEDs) from measurements of the angular distribution of the luminous intensity, such as total luminous flux, BA, inhomogeneity, anisotropy, direction of the optical axis and Lambertianity of the source. The performance of this method was experimentally tested for 18 high-power LEDs from different manufacturers and with different photometric characteristics. A small set of Zernike coefficients can be used to calculate all the mentioned photometric quantities and descriptors. For applications not requiring a great accuracy such as those of lighting design, the angular distribution of the luminous intensity of most of the studied LEDs can be interpolated with only two Zernike polynomials. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.