EELE 482 Electro-Optical Systems

J. A. Shaw F12

Converting LED photometric to radiometric values

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are used often in visual display applications. Consequently,
it is standard for the optical power output of visible-wavelength LEDs to be specified in
photometric units, which are radiometric units weighted according to the standard human
eye response. Specifically, the radiometric values are weighted by the photopic, or lightadapted, eye response (as opposed to the scotopic response, which is only valid for truly
dark-adapted vision). Tables listing values for these curves are included in our class
notes, along with further details on radiometric and photometric units and terminology.
The most common specification for the amount of light radiated by a visible-wavelength
LED is radiant intensity in units of mcd (millicandelas). A candela is a lumen/steradian
(lm/sr), while a lumen is the photometric unit of radiant flux that is just a scaled version
of optical power in watts.
Any photometric quantity can be obtained from its radiometric counterpart as follows:
(1)
xv K m x v( )d ,
where xv is a photometric quantity, x is the corresponding radiometric quantity, v() is
the visual response function normalized to a peak value of one, and Km is the luminous
efficacy, which serves as the scale factor carrying the proper value and units for v(). For
the photopic response function, Km is 683 lumens/watt, corresponding to the peak of v()
at a wavelength of 555 nm.
Monochromatic conversions
If the source radiates effectively only at one wavelength, equation (1) becomes a simple
algebraic expression that can be solved easily in either direction (radiometric to
photometric, or vice versa).
xv K m x v( ) .
(2)
For example, a red LED made of AlGaAs with model number LTST-C190CKT is listed
on its data sheet as emitting a typical luminous intensity Iv = 20 mcd. If we assume the
LED emits all of its light at the peak wavelength of 660 nm, then we can simply read
from the v() table and perform the following simple algebraic conversion:
Iv
0.020 [lm/sr]
I

4.8 10 4 [w/sr] 0.48 [mw/sr].

(3)
K m v( 660 nm) 683 [lm/w] 0.061
However, the data sheet actually lists two different wavelengths:
a) peak wavelength
660 nm
wavelength of actual peak emission
b) dominant wavelength
638 nm
wavelength of perceived emission
The dominant (or human-perceived) wavelength is shorter than the peak-emission
wavelength because the LEDs emission spectrum is several tens of nm wide and the
photopic eye response is much higher at short wavelengths than at long wavelengths.
Selecting between these two wavelengths requires consideration of non-monochromatic
conversions through spectral integration.
1

EELE 482 Electro-Optical Systems

J. A. Shaw F12

Non-monochromatic conversions
When a source does not emit at a single wavelength, the spectral distribution function
must be considered when converting between radiometric and photometric values. For
example, the LTST-C190CKT LEDs spectral emission function is plotted in Figure 1 and
the photopic visual response function is plotted in Figure 2 over the same spectral range.

Figure 1. Spectral emission function for the LTST-C190CKT red LED,

Figure 2. The photopic visual response function over the LEDs spectral range.

EELE 482 Electro-Optical Systems

J. A. Shaw F12

The human-perceived LED output is obtained by integrating the product of these two
curves, as is shown in Figure 3. Here it is clear that the dominant wavelength for human
perception is shorter than 660 nm (it is not clear that the best dominant wavelength value
is 638 nm, which requires looking at the colorimetric coordinates of the emission on a
CIE color diagram).

Figure 3. Product of LED emission spectrum and the photopic visual response
function, showing that the human-perceived LED radiation is dominant at shorter
wavelengths than the actual LED spectral emission function (Fig. 1).
So the question naturally arises, which wavelength gives the best monochromatic
approximation of the radiometric output from the photometric data sheet value? To
answer this rigorously requires inverting the integral equation (1). However, finding the
radiometric value embedded inside of the integral from a single photometric number is
not trivial. Doing this requires at least knowing the spectral distribution of the radiometric
quantity. There are many people who make careers out of inverting integral equations to
estimate an unknown quantity from imperfect measurements of another quantity.
A non-monochromatic conversion can be performed at least approximately if we use the
known LED spectral emission function together with the known photometric luminous
intensity, as follows. Lets express the radiometric intensity as a single value I [w/sr]
multiplied by a dimensionless spectral distribution function f(), which is the curve
shown in Figure 1. In this manner we can write
(4)
I v 683I f ( )v( )d.
The values of f() and v() used to create the graphs in Figures 1, 2, and 3 are listed in
Table 1.

EELE 482 Electro-Optical Systems

J. A. Shaw F12

Table 1. Values of the LED emission curve and the photopic response function
_______________________________________________________
[nm]

f()
v()
610
0
0.503
620
0.08
0.381
630
0.20
0.265
640
0.35
0.175
650
0.60
0.107
660
1.0
0.061
670
0.60
0.032
680
0.35
0.017
690
0.20
0.0082
700
0.08
0.0041
710
0
0.0021
________________________________________________________

We can use a tool like Matlab to numerically approximate the integral in eq. (4), being
careful to normalize so that the integral of f() over this spectral range gives a value of
one, allowing the actual numerical value of the LED emission to be contained within I.
i f i vi
(5)
I v 683I f ( )v( )d 683I
.
fi
i

We can now algebraically solve for the desired radiometric intensity I:

Iv fi
i
I
3.41 10 4 [w/sr] 0.34 [mw/sr].
683 f i vi

(6)

It is useful to note that the monochromatic conversion at the peak wavelength of 660 nm
gave I = 0.48 mw/sr, while the monochromatic conversion at the dominant wavelength of
approximately 640 nm gave I = 0.17 mw/sr. So apparently the peak wavelength is the
better choice, but appears to slightly overestimate the radiometric intensity.