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Band-extended angular spectrum method for accurate diffraction calculation

in a wide propagation range

Article  in  Optics Letters · February 2020

DOI: 10.1364/OL.385553

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 Letter
Band-extended angular spectrum method for
accurate diffraction calculation in a wide
propagation range
Wenhui Zhang, Hao Zhang,* AND Guofan Jin
State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments, Department of Precision Instrument, Tsinghua University,
Beijing, 100084, China
*Corresponding author: haozhang274@tsinghua.edu.cn
Received 11 December 2019; revised 9 February 2020; accepted 10 February 2020; posted 10 February 2020 (Doc. ID 385553);
published 13 March 2020
The band-extended angular spectrum method (ASM) is pro-
posed in this Letter for both near- and far-field diffraction
calculation with high accuracy. Due to the aliasing problem
of the transfer function (TF), the ASM is not suitable for
far-field diffraction calculation. For band-limited ASM,
the non-aliased bandwidth of the TF would shrink rapidly
with the increase of the propagation distance, which would
reduce the calculation accuracy in the far field. For the pro-
posed band-extended ASM, the non-aliased bandwidth is
significantly extended by rearranging the sampling points
in the spatial frequency domain. Therefore, more frequency
components of the TF contribute to the wave-field calcu-
lation, leading to a much wider propagation range and a
higher computational accuracy. © 2020 Optical Society of
America
https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.385553
Scalar diffraction calculation is a fundamental research topic
involved in a wide range of applications, including digital
holography [1–5], computer holography [6–8], diffraction
tomography [9,10], and beam shaping [11,12]. The angular
spectrum method (ASM) is a strict solution of the scalar diffrac-
tion theory without paraxial approximation and is widely used
to model the wave propagation [13,14], particularly in the high
numerical aperture and oblique illumination cases [15,16]. The
drawback of ASM is that it only works well for near field because
there would be aliasing in the transfer function (TF) for the
long-distance diffraction calculation [17].
Two typical solutions for ASM to model far-field propaga-
tions are (1) padding zeros to the source window to narrow the
sampling pitch in the spatial frequency domain for a non-aliased
TF [18,19]; and (2) forcing the aliased part of the TF to be
zero, which is usually called band-limited ASM [20]. For the
first solution, the computational complexity would increase
dramatically when the propagation distance increases. The huge
computation burden of the zero-padding method is mitigated
by linear convolution and fast Fourier transform (FFT), while
it is still large, and lots of sampling points are wasted [19]. For
the second solution, because the aliased TF components are
0146-9592/20/061543-04 Journal © 2020 Optical Society of America
Vol. 45, No. 6 / 15 March 2020 / Optics Letters 1543
forced to be zero and only the non-aliased TF components are
used, the effective non-aliased bandwidth of the TF would
decrease rapidly when the propagation distance increases [20].
By increasing the effective sampling number inside the non-
aliased band of the TF, the propagation distance could be further
expanded. However, the effective bandwidth is not extended,
and the sampling pitch of the destination plane is bigger than
that of the input plane due to the oversampling in the spatial fre-
quency domain [21]. It should be noticed that it is the effective
bandwidth of the TF that mainly influences the computational
accuracy of ASM.
In this Letter, a band-extended ASM is proposed, where
the effective non-aliased bandwidth of the TF is extended
by rearranging the sampling points in the spatial frequency
domain. The sampling points used to sample the aliased TF in
ASM or zeros in band-limited ASM are relocated to sample the
TF components beyond the “limited band.” All the sampling
points are effectively used in the calculation, which provides a
full utilization of the computational space-bandwidth product.
Therefore, more spatial frequency components contribute to
the wave propagation, which leads to an accurate calculation of
the diffraction field in a wide range.
Equation (1) is the TF of ASM,
 q 
H( f x , f y ) = exp ikz 1 − (λ f x )2 − (λ f y )2 , (1)
where f x , f y are the coordinates in the spatial frequency
domain, k = 2π/λ is the wave number associated with the
wavelength λ, and z is the propagation distance. Take one-
dimensional signal as example, when discretizing, f x is within
the range of [−1/21x , 1/21x ), where 1x is the spatial sam-
p Suppose there are 2 N points to
pling pitch of the input plane.
sample the phase ϕ = kz 1 − (λ f x )2 with a sampling pitch
1 f = 1/2N1x . (The reason for factor 2 will be explained fur-
ther in text.) The highest frequency component without aliasing
is calculated under the principle that the maximum local spatial
frequency should be no more than half the sampling rate [13],
which is
 1544 Vol. 45, No. 6 / 15 March 2020 / Optics Letters Letter

Fig. 1. Pipeline of (a) band-limited ASM and (b) proposed band-

extended ASM. (a) Sampling points of H( f x ) beyond the limited band
are forced to be zero in band-limited ASM; and (b) rearranged to get an
extended bandwidth in band-extended ASM.
Fig. 2. (a) Effective bandwidth Be and (b) sampling number Ne
comparison between the band-limited ASM and band-extended ASM
 1 ∂ϕ 
 
1 varying with the propagation distance z.
 
 2π ∂ f  ≤ . (2)
x max 21 f
From inequality (2), we can get Table 1. Parameters Used in the Numerical
1 Calculations
f x _limit = p . (3)
λ 1 + z 2 /N 2 12x Parameter Value
Wavelength λ = 500 nm
Under the condition of large z value, Eq. (3) can be simplified as Spatial Sampling Pitch 1x = 1 µm
N1x Total Sampling Number 2N = 2048
f x _limit = . (4)
λz s
In ASM, the whole bandwidth of H( f x ) associated with the spa- f x _extend λz
γB = = . (7)
tial sampling pitch 1x is BASM = [−1/21x , 1/21x ). However, f x _limit 2N12x
the effective non-aliased bandwidth Blimit = [− f x _limit , f x _limit ]
becomes much smaller than BASM as z increases. To avoid alias- Hence, with large propagation distance z, the band-extended
ing, the TF components outside Blimit are forced to be zero, effect is more obvious. Note that when z ≤ zc , we use ASM to
as shown in Fig. 1(a), which is the key point in band-limited replace band-extended ASM since the BASM can be fully used
ASM [20]. in this range. The critical distance zc is calculated by letting
Since the TF components outside Blimit are zero, the sam- f x _limit = 1/21x in Eq. (3), which gives
pling points at those positions are useless from the perspective of s
“frequency transfer.” To make full use of the sampling resources, 2N12x

λ 2 2N12x

we rearrange the sampling points by uniformly putting them to zc = 1− ≈ . (8)
an extended band, as shown in Fig. 1(b). The extended band is λ 21x λ
calculated with inequality (2), while replacing 1 f = 1/2N1x The approximation is valid in the case of 1x ≥ 2λ, which is
by 1 f _new = 2 f x _extend /2N, because the whole bandwidth is satisfied in most situations. And when z ≥ zc , the approx-
2 f x _extend in this case, as shown in Fig. 1(b). We obtain imations made in Eqs. (4) and (6) are valid. Besides, the
1
q p effective sampling number of band-extended ASM, which
f x _extend = √ Nλ N 2 λ2 + 16z 2 − N 2 λ2 . (5) is always fully employed, is also much more than that of band-
2 2λz limited ASM, which would decrease as z increases. Figure 2
Under the condition of large z value, Eq. (5) can be simplified as shows these comparisons. The simulation parameters of
Fig. 2 are listed in Table 1. From Fig. 2, we can see that the
bandwidth extension ratio γ B increases with the propaga-
r
N
f x _extend = . (6) tion distance, so does the effective sampling number ratio
2λz
γ N = 2N/(2 f x _limit /1 f ) = γ B2 . It means that more frequency
By comparing Eqs. (4) and (6), the effective bandwidth is components of the input field can be transferred during the wave
proportional to z −1 in band-limited ASM, and propor- propagation by the band-extended ASM. Therefore, accurate
tional to z −0.5 in band-extended ASM. It is evident that diffraction calculation for both the near and far field is expected
the band-extended ASM has a much wider effective band- due to the extension of the effective bandwidth.
width than the band-limited ASM with large z values. The After finishing the above analysis, the next step is to imple-
bandwidth-extended ratio γ B is defined as ment the proposed band-extended ASM. Wave propagation
 Letter
modeled by ASM requires the dot multiplication between
its TF [H( f x )] and the Fourier transform of the input field
[G( f x )], which should be operated at the same spatial frequen-
cies, as shown in Fig. 1(b). This process can be mathematically
expressed as
G ( f x ) = G m f 1 f _new


X
g (m x 1x ) exp −i2π m f m x 1 f _new 1x , (9)


=
mx
A ( f x ) = A m f 1 f _new = G m f 1 f _new H m f 1 f _new .



(10)
However, Eq. (9) cannot be √calculated by FFT because
1 f _new = 2 f x _extend /2N = 1/ 2Nλz 6 = 1 f = 1/2N1x ,
which is the sampling pitch given by FFT. For a given distance z,
there is actually a scaling factor R = 1 f _new /1 f between these
two sampling pitches. Therefore, Eq. (9) can be rewritten as
G( f x ) = G(m f 1 f _new )
X
= g (m x 1x ) exp(−i2πm f m x R1 f 1x ), (11)
mx
and our task becomes to find a method to achieve this scaled
FFT. There are two fast methods: chirp-z transform [22,23] and
non-uniform FFT (NUFFT) [24–26], which can be used to
calculate Eq. (11). Chirp-z transform is based on convolution,
and it requires three FFTs. NUFFT is based on the combination
of interpolation and FFT; and its computational complexity,
O(NlogN), is at a considerable level with FFT [25]. Taking
the computational efficiency into account, we employ NUFFT
to achieve this operation. Many methods of NUFFT have
been proposed during the last two decades to perform flexible
sampling in both space and spatial frequency domains [24–26].
Here, we use the type 3 of Greengard and Lee’s NUFFT
[24,25], which is defined as
X From Fig. 4(a), it is clear that the proposed band-extended ASM
G( f x ) = NUFFT3 {g (x )} = g (x i ) exp(−i x i f x ), (12)
i
where f x are the spatial frequency locations of desired Fourier
modes; x i are the sampling points’ locations of the input field
and should be within [−π, π ). Therefore, we first scale the
range of x i from [−N1x , N1x ) to [−π, π ) by multiplying
a factor τ = π/N1x and then apply the NUFFT to g (x ) to
obtain G( f x ). For more details of NUFFT, please see Ref. [24].
After getting the multiplication A( f x ) = H( f x ) × G( f x ),
similarly, we apply the inverse NUFFT to A( f x ) to get the
diffraction pattern u(x ) at the destination plane:
X extend the effective bandwidth of the TF. Consequently, more
u(x ) = NUFFT3 −1 {A( f x )} = A( f x j ) exp(i x f x j ), (13)
j tion, which gives a high diffraction calculation accuracy. And
where x are the spatial locations of the output values and are set
to be [−N1x , N1x ) with the pitch of 1x , which is the same
as that of the input field. The developed MATLAB code can be
founded in Ref. [27].
The proposed band-extended ASM is verified by calculating
the diffraction field of a rectangle aperture. Figure 3 shows
the diagram of the simulation model. The aperture width is
Vol. 45, No. 6 / 15 March 2020 / Optics Letters 1545
Fig. 3. Diagram of the simulation scenario. The calculation win-
dow is double size of the source window by zero padding to avoid
periodic convolution errors.


S = N1x filling the source window. To avoid the periodic con-
volution errors [17], N/2 zeros are padded on each side of the
source window. Hence, the total sampling number at the input
plane is 2 N, as N = 1024 is the sampling number of the source
window. This is also the reason why we use 2 N as the sampling
number during formula derivation. Parameters of this numeri-
cal calculation are listed in Table 1. The accuracy is defined as
SNR [28], which considers both the amplitude and phase distri-
butions, of the calculated wave fields u(x ) as compared with the
reference field u ref (x ) calculated by the Rayleigh–Sommerfeld
(R-S) integral [13]:
|u (x )|2 dx
R
SNR = S
, (14)
|u (x ) − αu ref (x )|2 dx
R
S
where
u(x )u ∗ref (x )dx
R
α = RS . (15)
S |u ref (x )|2 dx
Figure 4(a) shows SNRs of band-limited ASM and band-
extended ASM varying with the propagation distance z. The
SNR of the impulse response method [17], which only works
well for far field, is also illustrated for the reference purpose.
can achieve high diffraction calculation accuracy within a wide
propagation range. Specifically, the amplitude and phase distri-
butions calculated by band-limited ASM and band-extended
ASM at z = 2000 S are presented in Fig. 4(b). The R-S integral
results are also given for reference. In this demonstration, the
band-limited ASM, band-extended ASM, and impulse response
method take about 0.015 s, 0.018 s, and 0.025 s, respectively,
with a commercial laptop (CPU 2.9 GHz).
It is evident that the band-extended ASM can significantly
improve the accuracy of far-field diffraction calculation. This
capability is achieved by fully using the sampling resources to
spatial frequency components contribute to wave propaga-
benefiting from NUFFT, the sampling pitch at the destination
plane can be flexibly adjusted according to the requirements
[29], such as for a larger observation window. Finally, the ampli-
tude and phase distributions of the diffraction field from a
two-dimensional square aperture are calculated by the band-
limited ASM and band-extended ASM, as shown in Fig. 5. The
square aperture is placed at the center of the source window; its
size is N1x /2N1x /2, and the propagation distance is 800 S.
 1546 Vol. 45, No. 6 / 15 March 2020 / Optics Letters
Fig. 4. (a) Calculation accuracy, evaluated by SNR, of the
band-limited ASM, impulse response method, and the proposed
band-extended ASM; (b) amplitude and phase distributions of the
diffraction field from a rectangular aperture calculated by band-limited
ASM and band-extended ASM; R-S integral results for reference.
Propagation distance z = 2000 S.
Fig. 5. Amplitude and phase distributions of the diffraction field
from a two-dimensional square aperture calculated by band-limited
ASM and band-extended ASM; R-S integral results for reference.
Propagation distance z = 800 S.
Simulation parameters are shown in Table 1, and R-S integral
results are also given for reference. It is shown that the band-
extended ASM gives an accurate diffraction field, while the
band-limited ASM fails.
To summarize, in this Letter, we proposed a band-extended
ASM for both the near- and far-field diffraction calculation with
high accuracy, but without increasing computational complex-
ity. By rearranging the sampling points in the spatial frequency
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Letter
domain with NUFFT, a much wider effective non-aliased TF
bandwidth can be obtained. Therefore, more frequency com-
ponents can be transferred during the wave propagation, which
is beneficial to the computational accuracy. This method would
be useful for the applications that require accurate modeling of
wave propagation, such as holography, diffraction tomography,
diffractive optics, beam shaping, etc.
Funding. National Natural Science Foundation of China
(61875105).
Disclosures. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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