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Article
Restoration of Broadband Imagery Steered with a Liquid Crystal Optical Phased Array
Optical Engineering
  • Jeffrey Joseph Weinschenk
  • Russell C. Hardie, University of Dayton
  • Scott R. Harris, Air Force Research Laboratory, Electro-Optical Technology Division
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-1-2002
Abstract

In many imaging applications, it is highly desirable to replace mechanical beam-steering components (i.e., mirrors and gimbals) with a nonmechanical device. One such device is a nematic liquid crystal optical phased array (LCOPA). An LCOPA can implement a blazed phase grating to steer the incident light. However, when a phase grating is used in a broadband imaging system, two adverse effects can occur. First, dispersion will cause different incident wavelengths arriving at the same angle to be steered to different output angles, causing chromatic aberrations in the image plane. Second, the device will steer energy not only to the first diffraction order, but to others as well. This multiple-order effect results in multiple copies of the scene appearing in the image plane. We describe a digital image restoration technique designed to overcome these degradations. The proposed postprocessing technique is based on a Wiener deconvolution filter. The technique, however, is applicable only to scenes containing objects with approximately constant reflectivities over the spectral region of interest. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique.

Inclusive pages
2613-2619
ISBN/ISSN
0091-3286
Publisher
Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)
Peer Reviewed
Yes
Citation Information
Jeffrey Joseph Weinschenk, Russell C. Hardie and Scott R. Harris. "Restoration of Broadband Imagery Steered with a Liquid Crystal Optical Phased Array" Optical Engineering Vol. 41 Iss. 10 (2002)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/russell_hardie/57/