Ultra-fast speed, low grating lobe optical beam steering using unequally spaced phased array technique

Abstract

In this paper, we present a low grating lobe optical beam steering technique using unequally spaced phased array, in which the required spacings among phase elements are quantitatively analyzed so that the grating lobe can be minimized by the destructive interference from these unequally spaced phase elements. The large grating lobe is one of the major drawbacks of optical phased array technology, which limits the light efficiency and quality of the light beam. Thus, the low grating lobe technique presented in this paper could substantially improve the light efficiency and the quality of light beam, which may play an important role in a variety of applications such as fast speed ladar beam steering, large size high resolution display, and wide bandwidth free space optics communications.