Light Source: Doubling intensity versus doubling sources

[mdwebster]

Greetings,
I'm trying to figure out this optical intensity question. I'm looking at ways to increase the range of an IR emitter. Would it be better to put in a second emitter or increase the current to double the intensity of a single emitter.

Intuitively, it seems that multiple lights wouldn't increase, say, the half-brightness range as much as doubling the intensity of a single source, but I'm not sure. It seems that multiple sources just gives you the opportunity to increase your half-angle intensity by situating the LED's at slightly offset angles from one another.

But ... I'm not sure, so I thought I'd ask ...

Thanks for any help,
Mike

 

[harsha_jois]

Doubling sources my friend will only produce interference. If its constructve intensity will increase. But if you want higher range just increase the amount of current input. Because interference depends on the ambience. Hope you succeed Mike.

 

[FvM]

You can get effective interferences with monochromatic sources (e. g. laser diodes) only.

Above a certain level, IR LEDs show efficiency drop with increasing current, at this point, using multiple chips would be advisable, if no imaging optics is implied.