Four-access, 80 mm aperture all phase-controlled liquid crystal laser antenna

High speed, wide range, and high precise beam steering technology are fundamental to free-space optical communication (FSO). Liquid crystal optical phased array (LC-OPA) is capable of achieving non-mechanical beam steering. This paper demonstrates a parallel, four-communication access beam deflectio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optical engineering 2022-10, Vol.61 (10), p.105113-105113
Main Authors: Liang, Zhiqing, Huang, Yanwei, He, Xiaoxian, Wen, Dongmei, Wang, Yingli, Wang, Xiangru
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:High speed, wide range, and high precise beam steering technology are fundamental to free-space optical communication (FSO). Liquid crystal optical phased array (LC-OPA) is capable of achieving non-mechanical beam steering. This paper demonstrates a parallel, four-communication access beam deflection antenna based on LC-OPA, providing a large aperture, wide steering range, and high pointing precision. This antenna is composed of a coarse tracking subsystem using cascaded liquid crystal polarized grating (LCPG) and a fine tracking subsystem based on LC-OPA. The optical aperture is 80  mm  ×  80  mm, arranged in 2  ×  2 subapertures, each serving a single wavelength beam. Besides, a cascaded control platform based on field programmable gate array is proposed to realize low-latency response. This optical antenna achieves a steering resolution of 20  μrad and covers a range of ±12  deg in two dimensions, laying the foundation for simultaneous access of multiple terminals in FSO communication network.
ISSN:0091-3286
1560-2303
DOI:10.1117/1.OE.61.10.105113