Advantages of LED in navigation lights

Navigation mark light is a type of traffic light installed on certain navigation marks to ensure the safe navigation of ships at night. It emits a specified light color and flashing frequency at night to achieve the specified illumination angle and visibility distance. There are four types of navigation marks: fixed light marks, light buoys, light ships and lighthouses. Fixed light marks, light buoys and light ships are beacons used for navigation and warning. Lighthouses emit recognizable signals at sea day and night for ships to determine their positions and provide danger warnings to ships.



LED navigation marks are a new type of navigation marks that have been widely promoted in recent years and are receiving more and more attention from maritime departments. It is very important to reasonably select and correctly use LED navigation marks. In addition to applying flat LED light sources to guide lights, bridge culverts and rotating lights, more LED navigation marks are used in a circumferential direction. At present, navigation mark manufacturers in various countries around the world still use the two indicators of light intensity on the exit surface and vertical divergence angle to define LED navigation mark light parameters.

When LED single devices are used as light sources, they usually have a certain viewing angle, that is, their light intensity is guaranteed within a given viewing angle range, and the intensity is greatly attenuated outside the viewing angle. Its light intensity/viewing angle characteristic curve shows that the LED single device is a directional light source, rather than an omnidirectional point light source in a 4-dimensional space. The lens of the circumferential beacon light made of LED devices is different from that of an ordinary point light source lens.

For LED circumferential beacon lights, LED is a special light source. The LED single device itself has a small optical lens. The lens gathers the point light source on the semiconductor chip into a beam of a certain solid angle, and outputs the nominal light intensity within the nominal solid angle. For example, an LED device with a viewing angle of 30° solid angle outputs the nominal light intensity within the 30° solid angle, and when it exceeds 30°, the light intensity will decay rapidly. LED circumferential beacon lights evenly arrange LED devices with a certain viewing angle on a circle of a certain diameter. If we call this circle with LED devices arranged as the luminous circumference, then the specially designed circumferential Fresnel lens on the LED circumferential beacon is a special lens with the luminous circumference as the lens focus and the distance between the luminous circumference and the lens curved surface as the focal length. Comparing LED circumferential beacon lights with traditional single cone Fresnel lens beacon lights, the difference is that the lens focus of the former is at the center of the lens, while the latter is on the luminous circumference.

1. LED beacon lights have good horizontal light distribution characteristics.
The horizontal light distribution index is generally expressed by the horizontal light distribution characteristic curve. Its peak-to-valley value can be intuitively seen on multiple concentric circles, and the percentage of the peak-to-valley value can be determined by precise positioning on the coordinates. Under normal circumstances, the closer the peak value is to the valley value, the better the horizontal light distribution performance. The peak-to-valley value of a beacon with excellent horizontal light distribution characteristics is generally within 10%.

2. LED beacon lights can use advanced drive circuits.
Modern LED beacon lights must have a high conversion efficiency drive circuit (generally using a switching power supply), a high-precision flash cycle implemented by software, a self-detection circuit and an intelligent control circuit with a standard computer serial port, so that it can be easily connected to various telemetry and remote control systems or AIS systems.

3. LED beacon lights have a high light/electricity conversion efficiency
. Under the same power and divergence angle conditions, the higher the light intensity value of LED beacon lights, the higher the light/electricity conversion efficiency, and the more power saving in use. There are many ways to improve the efficiency of light/electricity conversion, but the main one is to design a reasonable control and power drive circuit.

4. LED navigation lights have good overall protection performance.
LED navigation lights can be made into a watertight structure of the entire light because they eliminate the mechanical moving parts of the traditional bulb changer. When a fully watertight structure is used, even if the entire navigation light is immersed in water, in addition to normal operation, remote monitoring can also be achieved through non-contact methods.
LED navigation lights can also be widely used in coastal and inland river navigation aids, and can also be used as high-altitude obstacle lights and oil platform explosion-proof lamps.