Preliminary spectral design of a LED- and light bulb-based sun spectrum simulator

Abstract

Sun simulator is a device which emits light with the same or very similar spectrum as the wavelength of sunlight. This device is extremely useful for performing consistent and reliable experiments with an artificial light source in a laboratory without sunlight. Sun simulators can be purchased; however, we wanted to design and develop a Sun simulator device that is more cost effective than the current models available on the market. For this purpose, the wavelengths of several different light sources have been experimented on. After analyzing the recorded spectra, we have performed Additive Spectrum Mixing (ASM) using LED lights and light bulbs. While the results were adequate, they were far from ideal. Our mission therefore was to find a better method of spectral mixing which is presented in this paper.