Thermal Analysis and Hybrid Compensation Design of a 10× Optical Zoom Periscope Lens for Smartphones

TL;DR

This paper introduces a compact 10× periscope zoom lens for smartphones with a hybrid thermal compensation system to maintain image quality across varying temperatures.

Contribution

The novel hybrid thermal compensation strategy combines passive and active mechanisms with a curved image sensor for improved thermal stability.

Findings

The lens maintains diffraction-limited resolution and less than 2% distortion across all zoom positions.

Thermal analysis shows an average MTF of 0.58 and a 12.8% degradation rate between −20 °C and 60 °C.

The design achieves a total depth of 4.96 mm while ensuring stable imaging performance.

Abstract

This study presents an optical and thermal design for a compact 10× periscope zoom lens suitable for smartphones, employing a hybrid thermal compensation scheme to ensure stable imaging performance over a wide range of temperatures. Our proposed zoom optics system integrates passive and active compensation mechanisms, further enhancing thermal stability through the use of a curved image sensor. Passive compensation is achieved through the selection of low-G optical materials and an optimized structural configuration. In contrast, active compensation dynamically adjusts the zoom group position in response to changes in ambient temperature. Optical simulations confirm that this 10× periscope zoom lens, composed of a prism, eight aspherical lenses, and two parallel plates, maintains diffraction-limited resolution and less than 2% distortion at all zoom positions (Zoom 1 to Zoom 6), achieving a total depth of 4.96 mm. Thermal analysis at temperatures ranging from −20 °C to 60 °C demonstrates that the optimized design, utilizing a curved sensor (Design type 3), achieves an average MTF of 0.58 and an average degradation rate of only 12.8%, exhibiting excellent non-thermal performance. These results highlight the effectiveness of the proposed novel hybrid thermal compensation strategy and surface sensor integration in realizing high-magnification, thermally stable periscope optics for next-generation smartphone imaging systems.

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