Eye-box extension in micro-OLED augmented reality near-eye display with a holographic multi-path optical element combiner

We present a holographic multi-path (HMP) approach to extend the eye-box of the off-axis reflective holographic optical element (HOE) combiners for micro-OLED augmented reality (AR) near-eye displays (NEDs). The compact form factor design requirement highly constrains the eye-box and the field of view (FOV) in the off-axis reflection HOE AR combiners. In this Letter, we show that multiplexing multiple independent optical paths into a HOE effectively extends the eye-box. In the proposed multi-path multiplexing approach, separate partial images of a micro-OLED are routed along the multiplexed beam paths and combined to generate a complete AR image. The experiment verifies that the multi-path multiplexing achieves a twofold increase in the eye-box compared to previous results, enhancing the user experience for AR applications.