Talk:Corner reflector

Corner reflector antennas
The page, as currently written, does not discuss corner reflector antennas at all, other than providing links to other sites. The page only discusses corner reflector radar targets, which are only vaguely similar to the antenna design, with a completely different purpose. Perhaps someone should either add the antenna to this page, or a separate page and put a disambiguation link on this page? --Coderjoe (talk) 18:57, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Seeing as nobody saw fit to add the relevant information, I removed it from the antennas category. If someone adds good information on the antenna variant of the design, then that would be a good time to add it back. --Short Circuit (talk) 03:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Naming and Content
This article contains useful information about non-electromagnetic reflectors: acoustic. Perhaps the description in the opening paragraph should be adjusted accordingly. Further, I believe the intent is truly passive reflectors and not antenna, so perhaps a separate article could be made for antennae, or integrated into an existing antenna article. Cam Finnigan (talk) 20:20, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I have a problem with the term "corner cube." If that term is supposed to shorten the phrase "corner of a cube" it isn't very effective. I have used "cube corner" instead because it just appears to be better English on the page. But even this term is too specific. This article doesn't talk about any other kind of corner reflector. These are all cube corners and I'm unaware of a cube corner being used in transmission. Sure a cat's eye will retroreflect like a cube corner, but does anyone call a cat's eye a "corner reflector"? Roof prisms will retroreflect in 2D, so those could be discussed on this page. But I don't know if the community includes roof reflectors in the category of corner reflectors. One might instead refer to roof prisms as "cube edges" and therefore not corner reflectors. My point is that there is a lot of poorly justified terminology in this article. That is somewhat due to the poorly justified terminology in the optics community. Personally, I avoid "corner reflector" and use "cube corner;" they appear interchangeable and I save two syllables. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.25.52.195 (talk) 18:56, 1 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has this article, Corner reflector, which covers both radio wave and optical corner reflectors (3 surface 90° retroreflectors), and Retroreflector which also covers other types of optical retroreflectors you mention, which work by other principles: cat's eyes, reflective beads, etc.   From Google it seems to me both "corner cube" and "cube corner" are alternate terms used for prism-type optical corner reflectors, so they should probably both be in this article.  Roof prism has its own article, and anyway it is a different device than a corner reflector.  As you say, I think the confusing terminology in this article just reflects the confusing terminology used in technical literature for these devices.  For example, both radio and optical "corner reflectors" are also called "retroreflectors".  We can't do much about confused terminology (WP:ALTERNATENAME).   All we can do is list the different names these devices are called. --ChetvornoTALK 01:59, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

How it works
Every physics textbook is a ref for the basic geometric proof, but which one uses the terminology of the article? Harder to find a geometric proof for the path length. Can something be found regarding polarization effects?165.121.80.57 (talk) 07:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Effective range to corner reflector
In a corner reflector the main reflexion the range corresponds to reflexion from the apex point of the corner (apex formed by the three reflecting surfaces). However, for a glass cube corner the refractive index of the glass comes into play. For a beam along the cube corner axes this should result in a range extension of (n-1)*d where d is the distance from the front surface of the reflector to the apex. This means the distance is measured to some point behind the mirror apex. For off-axis beams refraction at the front surface also comes into play.150.227.15.253 (talk) 12:23, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Slightly different exit angle?
Some people in my physics class have been debating the following:

Is it possible to make it so the reflected beam from a corner reflector is at a slight angle from the incoming beam? This could be of use to get more light back to a driver's eyes, which are higher than the headlights.

One of us thinks that a prism in the beam will do this -- the spread into separate colors would be reversed when the beam went through the prism on the way back. Most of us don't think that would work.

A lot of us think that if you tilted one or more of the mirrors so that it isn't exactly 90 degrees that would do it, but so far all we have is a whiteboard full of arrows and crudely drawn corner reflectors to show for it.

Has anyone actually made such a thing work? --2600:1700:D0A0:21B0:F9B5:924A:DF7F:B410 (talk) 12:52, 6 January 2022 (UTC)