Prototype and analysis of solid state beam steering using spatial light modulator for LIDAR

Solid state beam steering is the predominate technique for Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR). In the field of solid state beam steering devices, the commercial mass production device liquid crystal on silicon spatial light modulator (LCOS-SLM) for beam steering are attracting a lot of engineer attention but beam steering efficiency and speed are limited by the optical diffraction principals according to characteristic of SLM. Although ample studies have been conducted on the concept of beam steering by commercial LCoS-SLM and analyze the performance of beam steering, no work has succeeded in realization of SLM beam steering techniques for LIDAR range detection with Field of View (FOV) larger than 5° and distance detection ⪆10m. We present a prototype and methods of receiving rays reflected back from object and detected by Avalanche Photodiode (APD) with 1mm receive area under 1550nm pulse fiber laser source with 10ns and 100 khz repetition rate. The Fourier diffraction principle is employed to obtain the phase pattern on SLM for beam steering. Beam steering efficiency includes beam profile and coordinates after spanning angle optical system is analyzed. The performance and analysis of solid state SLM beam steering for LIDAR are explored.