Wide-Angle Agile Steerer

Large field-of-regard (FOR) scanners are often desirable for poassive and active optical-infrared (IR) sensor systems for applications such as imaging, ladar, precision munitions, space-based surveillance, security surveillance, remote sensing, and free-space optical communications. The large FOR scanners for precision munitions need to be fast, small, light, rugged, low in power consumption, and inexpensive. Present scanning approaches using binary optics with microshifting mechanism, gimbaled mirror and wedge scanners, and liquid crystal phased arrays have limitations in image quality, size, mass, and/or speed. We propose to perform a detailed analysis through a preliminary design and performance prediction of a novel large FOR optical/IR scanning system. This system can rapidly steer coherent and incoherent illumination to any angle within a large FOR. It may be used in many applications. This concept has the potential to provide substantial performance improvements over previous techniques. The analysis will include parametric design studies to determine the performance tradeoffs and operating constraints. The design will then be optimized for a precision munitions application.