Recent developments in optical communication systems have presented an emerging need for scanning and tracking dynamic targets with high accuracy. Unfortunately, conventional scanners have difficulty supplying either sufficient vision information or high scanning resolution because of the fixed optical parameters and optomechanical structure. This paper introduces a novel cascaded double-prism scanner that combines the two scanning modes of rotating and titling motions into a nested device. The analysis results show that both the vertical field angle range and the horizontal field range of the coarse scanning are no less than ±10°, with the scanning accuracy superior to 50 μrad, while the vertical field angle range and the horizontal field range of the fine scanning are, respectively, no less than 2500 μrad and 1200 μrad, with the scanning accuracy superior to 1 μrad. The scanning method not only meets the requirements of collaboratively steering the beam deviation in a large range with high accuracy but also can obtain a variety of scanning modes and trajectories, which has important engineering significance for the solution of steering a fine beam to track and position a dynamical target.
© 2012 Optical Society of America