Liquid crystal tunable beam steering for free-space optical communications

Optical free space communications have been of exponential interest in recent years. Some future important applications are large range free space optical communications and high altitude platforms. For these applications, non-mechanical beam steering is desired, basically because small, lightweight, stable and easily calibrated devices are required. In this work it is proposed a LC beam steering that overpass the typical LC phase modulators, it has a very simple voltage control (only four electrodes are necessary), and for this reason, is lighter and smaller than previous proposals. The deflection angles are totally configurable in analog way. Deflections angles can be tuned from-1.5m° to +1.5m° analogy. Then for higher voltages the device can be used as a tunable 2D diffraction grating. This benefit is to come in the form of compact, lowpower, lightweight optical phased arrays that provide greater flexibility in their steering capability.