Liquid crystal lens with four driving voltages and its applications in imaging system with rectangular aperture

Liquid crystal lens has the characteristic of variable focal length. Many studies have demonstrated that electronically controlled focusing without mechanical movements can be realized by using liquid crystal lenses in imaging system. In this paper, a four-electrodes liquid crystal lens with a rectangular aperture is applied to focus. The aperture’s aspect ratio of the liquid crystal lens can be designed arbitrarily so that installing it with the periscope lens in phones becomes possible.

Spontaneous Emission Enhancement by a Rectangular-Aperture Optical Nanoantenna: An Intuitive Semi-Analytical Model of Surface Plasmon Polaritons

The spontaneous-emission enhancement effect of a single metallic rectangular-aperture optical nanoantenna on a SiO2 substrate was investigated theoretically. By considering the excitation and multiple scattering of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in the aperture, an intuitive and comprehensive SPP model was established. The model can comprehensively predict the total spontaneous emission rate, the radiative emission rate and the angular distribution of the far-field emission of a point source in the aperture. Two phase-matching conditions are derived from the model for predicting the resonance and show that the spontaneous-emission enhancement by the antenna comes from the Fabry–Perot resonance of the SPP in the aperture. In addition, when scanning the position of the point source and the aperture length, the SPP model does not need to repeatedly solve the Maxwell’s equations, which shows a superior computational efficiency compared to the full-wave numerical method.

A Full-Aperture Image Synthesis Method for the Rotating Rectangular Aperture System Using Fourier Spectrum Restoration

The novel rotating rectangular aperture (RRA) system provides a good solution for space-based, large-aperture, high-resolution imaging tasks. Its imaging quality depends largely on the image synthesis algorithm, and the mainstream multi-frame deblurring approach is sophisticated and time-consuming. In this paper, we propose a novel full-aperture image synthesis algorithm for the RRA system, based on Fourier spectrum restoration. First, a numerical simulation model is established to analyze the RRA system’s characteristics and obtain the point spread functions (PSFs) rapidly. Then, each image is used iteratively to calculate the increment size and update the final restored Fourier spectrum. Both the simulation’s results and the practical experiment’s results show that our algorithm performs well in terms of objective evaluation and time consumption.

Comparison of numerical integration methods for calculating diffraction of a plane electromagnetic wave by a rectangular aperture

We discuss features of the calculation of a Fraunhofer integral by traditional quadrature numerical integration methods and a special collocation Levin method when calculating the diffraction of a plane electromagnetic wave by a rectangular aperture. For the quadrature numerical integration methods, a criterion for the assessment of the integration step is derived depending on the screen size and required calculation accuracy. Advantages of the use of the special collocation Levin method in comparison with the traditional quadrature numerical integration methods are shown.

Compact Full Ka-Band Waveguide Directional Coupler Based on Rectangular Aperture Array with Stairs

This article presents a compact 3 dB waveguide directional coupler with full waveguide bandwidth. It consists of a pair of rectangular waveguides with stairs structures in the coupling region. The waveguides are placed parallel to each other along their broad wall, which has a rectangular aperture array. The compact size, broad bandwidth, good in-band coupling flatness, and good return loss are achieved by using the proposed structure. For verification purposes, a prototype of the proposed coupler was designed, manufactured, and measured. The experimental results show that over the full waveguide bandwidth a return loss of input port better than 17.46 dB, coupling strength varying between −2.74 dB and −3.80 dB, power-split unbalance within 0.76 dB, and an isolation better than 20.82 dB were obtained. The length of the coupling region was only 15.82 mm.