Abstract

A digital beam steering system is designed using a contiguous stack of multiple modules each consisting of a fast-responding ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) layer and a Wollaston prism. The FLC layer is organized to provide a halfwave retardation, which in combination with the Wollaston prism ensures a predetermined angular deflection, which in turn depends on the thickness, refractive indices, wavelength, and split angle of the prism. With each succeeding module designed to yield an angular beam deflection of 2^m–1 x rad, where m is the number of module and x is the angular deflection of the first module, the total system can be designed to have high resolution, fast response, and good pointing accuracy. The problems such as those of ray walk-off, aperture adjustments, and imperfect addition of angles are considered in detail in designing the complete system.

© 1988 Optical Society of America