The Structure Research and Design for Beam Steering and Adjustment in Golay3 Sparse-Aperture Imaging System

Abstract

In order to further explore the technical difficulties involved in orienting the sparse-aperture imaging system towards practical applications, this paper proposes an optical–mechanical structure design scheme and performance simulation, as well as actual alignment on the beam steering and adjustment structure, which is the core component of the Golay3 sparse-aperture imaging system. The beam steering and adjustment structure corrects the cophasing error by using a combination of mechanical rough adjustment and piezoelectric ceramic precision adjustment. The beam adjustment capability of the beam steering and adjustment structure is analyzed by simulation when the system contains the piston error and the tilt error. The piston error is controlled within 12 μm and the tilt error is controlled within 1200 μrad through the mechanical rough adjustment light path using a large-diameter collimation as the point light source, which realizes the confocality of three beams and mutual interference between two beams. With the USAF1951 resolution test panel display in the distance as the surface target, the adjustable piezoelectric ceramics control the piston error within 55 nm and the tilt error within 0.25 μrad, obtaining the surface target imaging result of the sparse aperture.

Keywords

• Golay3
• sparse aperture
• optical–mechanical design
• system alignment