Laser Radar Liquid Crystal Phased Array Wave Controller Study

Phased-array ladar is a new system radar. The application of optic phased array(OPA) make the ladar system have simpler mechanical structures, lighter weight and well comprehensive performance. Beacause liquid crystal phased array(LCPA) has advantages of low driving voltage,small power consumption and fast response speed, it can effectively solve the problems about high performance beam steering and flexible operation of laser radar. Therefore, recently LCPA technology has been deeply researched and the OPA realized by liquid crystal has been one of important trends. The beam steering system discussed in this thesis is a key technology to realize LCPA.This thesis is developed relied on a specific research project.The work on the beam steering system of LCPA of lidar is shown below.1) The functional requirements of beam steering system is analyzed and two design schemes of the hardware of beam steering system is presented. Then, after comparation and analysis of the two schemes, one of them is selected. At last ,the hardware circuits for every module of the beam steering system are designed and the PCB is layouted.2) According to the situation that now the beam steering system is mainly applied to deflection beam steering test experiment, a control software of this test experiment is developed3) The principle and method of beam steering of LCPA is analyzed. A generation algorithm of beam steering deflection test data is designed according to the liquid crystal curve simulated by functions. The beam steering test data generated by this algorithm is successfully used for deflection beam steering test experiment.4) Every module of the hardware system of beam steering system is debugged and verified .A testing platform for beam steering of LCPA is constructed by the product of beam steering system and a series of beam steering test experiments have been carried out. The results of these experiments testify that the basic functions required by design scheme of beam steering are realized and the beam steering system can deflect laser by the programable and electric control. The test also demonstrate that the LCPA component which is developed by LIDAR LCPA componet projects'research group of UESTC(University of Electronic Science and Technology of China) has the ability of beam steering and can be used as beam steering component of LIDAR.