Patent ID: 7784695

Claim:
A planar laser illumination module (PLIM) comprising: (i) a laser illumination source driven by high frequency modulated (HFM) diode current drive circuitry, for producing a laser beam having a characteristic wavelength, a coherence length, and spectral sideband components about said characteristic wavelength; (ii) beam collimating optics disposed beyond said laser illumination source, for producing an input laser beam; (ii) an optical beam multiplexer (OMUX) device disposed beyond said beam collimating optics, for multiplexing said input laser beam and producing multiple spatial-coherence reduced output laser beams; and (iv) a planarizing-type illumination lens array disposed beyond said OMUX device, and arranged for receiving said multiple spatial-coherence reduced output laser beams and generating a plurality of substantially planar coherence-reduced laser illumination beams that form a composite substantially planar laser illumination beam having a substantially reduced coherence length.