Hughes Aircraft Company

Daniel M Battista

Clifton Quan

Brian David Young

John J Ferrer

Gary L Crandall

Alan J Reuter

Keith Whaley

Bruce F Wolfe

Robert D Williams

A low cost, compact projection display source that serves as a very bright image source for an automotive head up display. The present invention is comprised of a high intensity halogen light source and a liquid crystal display. The liquid crystal display is controlled by display electronics that write images onto the liquid crystal display that are to be displayed to the driver or passengers of a vehicle. Light output from the high intensity light source is transmitted through a piece of infrared energy absorbing glass, a decentered lens, such as a Fresnel lens, and a diffuser that uniformly backlights the liquid crystal display. Crossed polarizers are used on either side of the liquid crystal display. The high intensity light output transmitted by the liquid crystal display is passed through a yellow-orange output window which is projected onto a toric combiner for display to the driver of the vehicle. A fan provides cooling for the liquid crystal display and display circuitry that interfaces between the display electronics and the liquid crystal display. The projection display source produces a very high contrast (very bright) image source without heat problems. The projection display source is capable of producing 20,000 foot-lamberts of light energy output. The projection display source is the brightest known image source for non-military head up displays of either the non-reconfigurable or reconfigurable variety. The yellow-orange color used for the output window of the projection display source is used to maximize color contrast with the display background.

Head up display with a lens decentered to the optical axis of the

A multistage transmission line interconnect device (50) for joining two microstrip circuits (82, 86). A center conductor pin (52) extends through a cylindrical dielectric (54) to form a coaxial midsection of the device. The ends of the pin extend from the dielectric to form a conductor for a straight open troughline at each end of the device. The ends of the pin are connected to the microstrip circuits by ribbon bonds (80, 84). Because the midsection of the device is coaxial, the microstrip circuits (82, 86) may be oriented at arbitrary angles with respect to one another.

Coaxial microstrip-to-microstrip interconnection system

A suspended stripline corporate feed with an orthogonal transition to a coaxial transmission line at each of its input/output ports. Alternate I/O ports are pointed in opposite directions so that devices on both sides of the feed can be serviced by the same circuit. The cover for the feed is made out of injection molded, copper plated plastic. When utilized to distribute RF energy to T/R modules in an Active Array, the feed is machined as an integral part of the heat exchanger which cools the modules.

Suspended stripline RF feed with orthogonal coaxial transitions and

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Marina Del Rey, CA, United States of America

Daniel M Battista