Theoretical analysis of an artificial superposition compound eye for application in ultra flat digital image acquisition devices

A new concept for a flat digital image acquisition device for large field of views (FOV) has been developed. Antetypes for the optical system are compound eyes of small insects and the Gabor-Superlens. A paraxial 3x3 matrix formalism is used to describe the arrangement of three microlens arrays (MLA) with different pitches to find the first order parameters of the system. These considerations are extended to arrays of anamorphic lenses with variable parameters to achieve homogeneous optical performance over the whole FOV. The model. is validated by implementation of different systems into commercial raytracing software. A trade-off between system length, sensitivity and diffraction limited resolution as well as aberrations is discussed.