Experimental validation of the six-port design for a highly uniform integrating sphere photometer

We present experimental realization and validation of the six-port design of integrating sphere photometers for total luminous flux measurement, which significantly improves the uniformity of spatial response compared to the conventional single-port design. Construction, measurement procedure, and data acquisition of the realized instrument with a radius of 1 m are described. Measurement of the spatial response distribution function confirms the expected effect of improving the uniformity by averaging the signals from the six detection ports. The related spatial mismatch error is determined to be less than 1.4% for all the realistic cases of beam angles and directions of a test lamp mounted in the vicinity of the sphere center. As a result, we confirm that the realized six-port instrument allows us to eliminate the complicated spatial mismatch correction procedure by adding a relative standard uncertainty of only 1.4/root 3%0 approximate to 0.81%, which offers a great practical benefit for testing solid-state lighting products of various beam characteristics. (c) 2013 Optical Society of America