Progress and analysis of the liquid crystal phased array technology in ladar

Phased array ladar is a new type of ladar that using an optical phased array (OPA) as beam steering device. In the application of the ladar, the development of liquid crystal optical phased array (LC-OPA) technology is introduced in this paper. Through the discussion about the response speed, deflection efficiency and steering angle, the performance of the liquid crystal optical phased array beam steering is described. Subsequently, we introduce the progress of the phased array ladar, multiple beams scanning and tracking using liquid crystal phased arrays.