Patent ID: 9678355
Date: 2017-06-13
CPC Classifications: G01B,G02B

Claim:
1. An optical device for generating an illumination pattern, the optical device comprising: a beam splitter and a pattern generator mounted in series and optically coupled one with the other, the beam splitter and the pattern generator configured to cooperate one with the other in formatting an incident light beam into the illumination pattern, the illumination pattern having a plurality of diffraction patterns each resulting from a corresponding splitting of the incident light beam by the beam splitter, each diffraction pattern having a zero-order beam, the zero-order beams being separated from one another in the illumination pattern, and wherein at least a first one of the diffraction patterns overlaps with at least a second one of the diffraction patterns, forming at least one overlapping region which contains the zero-order beams of the first one and of the second one of the diffraction patterns.