Improvement for the steering performance of liquid crystal phased array

Optical phased array technology is introduced and the steering performances of liquid crystal phased array are discussed, several factors affecting the beam steering performances are analyzed completely, also simple models for some typical factors are developed. Then, a new method based on iterating and modifying the output phase pattern of liquid crystal phase shifters is proposed. Using this method, the modified voltages applied on electrodes of liquid crystal phase shifters can be obtained, after applying the voltages, the influence of factors can be compensated to some extent; the steering angle accuracy and efficiency with liquid crystal phased array can be improved. Through the simulation for the angle range from 0° to −1°, the error of steering angle can be reduced three orders of magnitude, and the efficiency can be increased almost 30% after several iterations.