SA PHOTONICS, LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: SB153-005

Description

Many applications require conformal, broadband, wide Field-Of-Regard (FOR), rapid optical beam steering. Airborne laser radar and communication are two very important ones. Defense against infrared guided missiles, wind profiling, and gas/chemical threat detections are other examples.For these applications, beam steerers should have the following performances:10 cm, 60 deg. 2-D FOR>75% transmission efficiency>=10% optical bandwidthBeam quality <= 3 times diffraction limit< 1 ms steering timeVisible to MWIR Gimbal beam steerers are large, heavy, non-conformal and do not support the required steering rates. MEMS beam steerers are fast, but have limited FOR and only support small aperture sizes. Acousto-optic deflectors are narrowband, expensive, and require very large electrical power.Optical Phased Arrays (OPA) can provide precise, random-access, stable beam steering. Existing liquid crystal OPA beam steerers offer excellent SWaP-C benefit but they are narrowband and have low efficiencies at steering angles > 3 degrees. To address these shortcomings, SA Photonics is pleased to propose the development of our PLZT-based EO Beam Steerer (PLEOS), an EO-based OPA. It can steer an optical beam in << 1 ms. As a result, PLEOS has the ability to meet the requirements stated above.