A novel cascaded optical phased array antenna with a phased wedge

In the free space optical communication system with optical phased array antenna, the performance of acquisition tracking pointing subsystem is affected by the two conflicting performance of optical beam steering precision and optical beam steering range. The novel cascaded optical phased array antenna integrates a programmable phased wedge and an usual optical phased array together. For the novel cascaded optical phased array, it has the function of a phased wedge and an optical phased array with only one liquid crystal device. With theoretical analysis and experiment studying on this novel cascaded optical phased array, the results show that the novel cascaded optical phased array antenna has a good steering precision with the same optical beam steering range of usual optical phased array.