Theoretical model and experimental verification on the PID tracking method using liquid crystal optical phased array

Liquid crystal optical phased array (LC-OPA) has been considered with great potential on the non-mechanical laser deflector because it is fabricated using photolithographic patterning technology which has been well advanced by the electronics and display industry. As a vital application of LC-OPA, free space laser communication has demonstrated its merits on communication bandwidth. Before data communication, ATP (acquisition, tracking and pointing) process costs relatively long time to result in a bottle-neck of free space laser communication. Meanwhile, dynamic real time accurate tracking is sensitive to keep a stable communication link. The electro-optic medium liquid crystal with low driving voltage can be used as the laser beam deflector. This paper presents a fast-track method using liquid crystal optical phased array as the beam deflector, CCD as a beacon light detector. PID (Proportion Integration Differentiation) loop algorithm is introduced as the controlling algorithm to generate the corresponding steering angle. To achieve the goal of fast and accurate tracking, theoretical analysis and experimental verification are demonstrated that PID closed-loop system can suppress the attitude random vibration. Meanwhile, theoretical analysis shows that tracking accuracy can be less than 6.5μrad, with a relative agreement with experimental results which is obtained after 10 adjustments that the tracking accuracy is less than12.6μrad.