Abstract
We present a wide-angle, nonmechanical laser beam steerer based on polymer
polarization gratings with an optimal design approach for maximizing field-of-regard
(FOR). The steering design offers exponential scaling of the number of
steering angles, called suprabinary steering. The design approach can be easily adapted
for any 1-D or 2-D (e.g., symmetric or asymmetric FOR) beam steering. We simulate
a system using a finite difference and ray tracing tools and fabricate coarse beam
steerer with 65° FOR with ~8° resolution at 1550 nm. We demonstrate
high optical throughput (84%–87%) that can be substantially improved by optimizing
substrates and electrode materials. This beam steerer can achieve very low sidelobes and
supports comparatively large beam diameters paired with a very thin assembly and low
beam walk-off. We also demonstrate using a certain type of LC variable retarder that the
total switching time from any steering angle to another can be 1.7 ms or
better.
© 2015 IEEE
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