Application of LED Light Sources with Light Guide Optics.

LEDs have been used in exterior lighting since the late 1990s in the form of customized LED arrays. Typically for those applications, each LED had a lens or reflector optic. The future styling trends explore the use of light guides or fibers to create transparent three dimensional structures. Light guides allow the designer to create lamps of various shapes with one standard light module without the need to rearrange the LEDs. However the design of those light guides can be inefficient and has its optical and mechanical limitations. Therefore the optical coupling efficiency to the light source is a key element in the design of the system. Key features for a LED light source module (here called DVO for Direct View Optic module) are proposed and advantages over standard LEDs in light guide applications are discussed.