Through the rapid development of LED TV, a large-area edge-lit backlight unit is widely researched in the display industry for enhancing the optical efficiency, luminous uniformity and slim design. In addition, an edge-lit backlight unit includes many optical sheets such as reflection sheet, prism sheet and diffuser sheet. However the function can be replaced by the carefully patterned light guide plate (LGP). Micro patterns which located on the top and bottom surface of light guide plate was designed by ray-tracing optical simulation. The designed patterns improved the light characteristics of LGP, including optical extraction efficiency and intensity distribution uniformity. These results suggest that it is very effective method to design edge-lit LGP with micro-patterns on both sides for large-area display and to reduce the fabrication cost.