Beam-steered infrared (IR) light communication has gained tremendous attention as one of the solutions of congested wireless communication traffic. High performance active beam-steering devices play a crucial role in data allocation and exchange. Conventional beam-steering devices such as spatial light modulator (SLM) and micro-electrical mechanical system (MEMS) mirror and the current emerging nonmechanical beam-steering metasurface-based devices are challenging to realize a large tunable steering angle beyond several degrees, which significantly hinders the spatial application of optical wireless communications (OWC). Herein, an angle-magnified liquid crystal (LC) metadevice consisting of LC metasurfaces and a liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) is proposed to realize active beam steering with a tunable large field of view (FOV). Based on the angle-magnified tunable LC metadevice, an intelligent bidirectional high-speed OWC system is experimentally demonstrated, achieving an actively enlarged FOV of 20° × 20°, with a data rate of 200 Gbps over the S/C/L band for both uplink and downlink transmission over a propagation distance of 1.5 m in free space. The proposed OWC system opens a new avenue for the future high performance wireless data transmission.

中文翻译：

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由液晶超器件辅助的具有可调大视场的双向高速光无线通信


波束控制红外 （IR） 光通信作为无线通信流量拥塞的解决方案之一，受到了极大的关注。高性能有源波束控制设备在数据分配和交换中起着至关重要的作用。传统的光束控制器件，如空间光调制器 （SLM） 和微机电系统 （MEMS） 镜，以及目前新兴的非机械基于光束控制超表面的器件，难以实现超过几度的大可调转向角，这极大地阻碍了光无线通信 （OWC） 的空间应用。在此，提出了一种由 LC 超表面和硅基液晶 （LCoS） 组成的角度放大液晶 （LC） 超器件，以实现具有可调大视场 （FOV） 的主动光束转向。基于角度放大可调谐 LC 元器件，实验演示了一种智能双向高速 OWC 系统，在 1.5 m 的自由空间内，在 S/C/L 频段上× 20° 的主动扩大视场，数据速率为 200 Gbps，上下行传输。拟议的 OWC 系统为未来的高性能无线数据传输开辟了一条新途径。