JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 31, NO.

12, JUNE 15, 2013 2001

Free Space Communications With Beam Steering

a Two-Electrode Tapered Laser Diode
Using Liquid-Crystal SLM
Feng Feng, Ian H. White, and Timothy D. Wilkinson

Abstract—A free space optical wireless communication system
with 3 degree angular coverage and 1.25 GHz modulation band-
width is reported, in which relatively narrow laser beam of a simul-
taneous high power, high modulation speed and ultra high mod-
ulation efficiency directly modulated two-electrode tapered laser
diode is steered using a nematic phase-only Liquid-Crystal On Sil-
icon Spatial Light Modulator (LCOS SLM) by displaying recon-
figurable 256 phase level gratings.
Index Terms—Beam steering, free-space optical communication,
semiconductor lasers, spatial light modulators (SLMs).
I. INTRODUCTION
F REE space optical wireless communication has received
enormous attention duo to its abundant unregulated and
license-free optical spectrum, ease and low cost of installation,
and high data security making it a promising candidate to
provide high data rate wireless communications over certain
distance for “last mile”, temporary applications and locations
where installing fiber is not feasible [1]–[4]. Thanks to its im-
munity to Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) from existing
radio frequency systems, optical wireless systems are highly
attractive for sites such as airport and hospital. Also indoor
optical wireless has become one of the possible solutions to
address dramatically increased bandwidth demand in access
networks [5]–[7],
Relatively long range, very high speed (Gigabits/s or more)
free space optical wireless communication systems require a
laser diode that has high power as well as high modulation speed
operation. A fiber based transmitter system with proper fiber
amplifier and fiber redesign can achieve high power and high
speed modulation for free space communications [8]. However
this raises beam quality issue that may make beam shaping dif-
ficult. High power can be achieved by external amplification
[3] and power combining [9], which complicate systems. A si-
multaneous high power, high modulation speed and ultra high
Manuscript received January 30, 2013; revised April 05, 2013; accepted May
06, 2013. Date of publication May 22, 2013; date of current version May 27,
2013. The work of F. Feng was supported in part by the Chinese Scholar Council
and Cambridge Overseas Trust.
The authors are with the Electrical Division, Engineering Department, Uni-
versity of Cambridge, CAPE Building, Cambridge, CB3 0FA, U.K. (e-mail:
ff263@cam.ac.uk; ihw3@cam.ac.uk; tdw13@cam.ac.uk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JLT.2013.2262372
modulation efficiency also with good beam quality two-elec-
trode tapered laser diode has been reported in [10], [11]. Com-
pared with other sources, the tapered laser is a more compact
solution. Meanwhile, high modulation efficiency feature allows
using standard optical communication component to achieve
high optical modulation amplitude without amplifying electrical
modulation current swing like [12].
With aforementioned tapered laser diode, a 60 meter
error-free free space communication transmission link was
demonstrated in our previous work [13]. Relatively precise
alignment is required in the experiment. Adaptive beam
steering can extend coverage of free space communication
system while maintaining narrow beam, which can be used
for system auto aligning and correction of misalignment [14],
[15]. A Liquid-Crystal On Silicon Spatial Light Modulator can
steer laser beam by displaying different holograms without
mechanical movement. Comparing other means of beam
steering, such as actuated mirrors[16], risley prism [17], and
microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS) [18], LCOS SLM
has highly repeatable performance, high tolerance to pixel
errors and also capability of correction of optical aberration
from atmosphere turbulence and other beam manipulations,
such as beam splitting. Beam steering, aberration correction
and other optical beam manipulation operations can be per-
formed together by superposition holograms for each operation
[19]. Also LCOS SLM does not limit modulation bandwidth.
A mode-division multiplexing transmission with 12.5 GHz
modulation bandwidth over OM2 multimode fiber using LCOS
SLM as a mode launcher is demonstrated in [30].
In this paper, a nematic phase-only LCOS SLM displaying
multi-phase holograms is used to actively steer directly modu-
lated two-electrode high power tapered laser diode increasing
the system angular coverage to 3 degree without any moving
part. This work was performed in the context of building
to building or “last mile” free space optical communication
systems.
II. TWO ELECTRODE TAPERED LASER DIODE
The two-electrode tapered laser diode used in the experiment
is from our previous European project named ‘BRIGHTER’[13]
and it operates at 1060 nm. The schematic illustration and CW
- characteristics of the laser diode were presented in our pre-
vious work [13]. Here laser operating principle will be described
in more details. Laser operating condition and its performance
for beam steering experiment will be introduced at the end of
this section.

0733-8724/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE

2002
Fig. 1. Gain versus carrier density curve showing the bias operating points of
each section.
Simultaneous high power, high modulation speed and high
modulation efficiency make the compact tapered laser a novel
free space communication source without requiring optical am-
plifier in free space communication systems, which results from
using two electrode separate excitation in a “gain levering” tech-
nique. The relative short index-guided single-transverse mode
ridge waveguide provides spatial transverse mode filtering to
generate a high quality beam profile within the laser cavity. The
relative long gain-guided tapered section with 4 full angles am-
plifies the optical power by providing sufficient gain to realize
high power operation. Speed of modulation can be quantified by
a modulation current efficiency factor , through the dif-
ferential gain and the photon lifetime . For standard lasers,
large laser dimensions are required to achieve high power op-
eration, which however limits direct modulation speed duo to
the long photon lifetime. To overcome long photon lifetime,
the ridge and tapered section are excited separately using the
gain-levering technique. Separate excitation improves modula-
tion bandwidth for the high power tapered laser [20].
A two-electrode laser is based on sub-linear nature of the
gain versus carrier density characteristics of the laser as shown
in Fig. 1. Large carrier density change in one section can be
obtained by a small injection current change in the other sec-
tion. This is referred to as “gain lever” effect [20]–[23]. Under
gain-lever operation, large tapered section is biased with a high
net gain but low differential gain, nevertheless short ridge sec-
tion is biased with a low net gain but high differential gain. The
gain associated with the ridge section is much smaller than that
of the tapered section, because the ridge section comprises only
a fraction of the overall cavity of the device. With the assump-
tion that photon density is uniform and remains lower than the
saturation density in each section, the differential gain of the
ridge section is larger than differential gain of the tapered sec-
tion. As a result, small current swing injected in the ridge section
can cause enhanced reaction in the laser net gain as illustrated in
Fig. 1 and minimizes the input current swing required for mod-
ulating the output optical power [24].
The laser is driven at a bias point of 29.96 mA Ridge current
and 1181.4 mA Tapered current in beam steering experiment.
The modulation current swing in the ridge section is 16 mA.
The slope efficiency at this operating point is 6.59 W/A, which is
more than 10 times that of a single electrode laser with the same
JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 31, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2013
structure. The optical modulation amplitude is 105.4 mW, av-
erage optical output power is 154.5 mW and the extinction ratio
is 3 dB. The high modulation efficiency allows a large power
budget for optical loss.
III. BEAM STEERING USING LCOS SLM
A. Holographic Beam Steering Principle
Beam steering using LCOS SLM is essentially reconfig-
urable displaying different phase ramps to tilt an incoming
wavefront at different angles. The choice of LCOS SLM device
is a trade-off between number of phase levels that each pixel
can produce and LC switching speed. Nematic devices can
perform multilevel phase modulation, but they have slower
switching speed than Ferroelectric devices. To compensate step
disturbance and random vibrations up to certain frequency for
adaptive board-to-board free space interconnect, a Ferroelectric
SLM is used making use of its fast switching feature [31].
However, a Ferroelectric device is capable of only binary state
(amplitude or phase) modulation and requires DC balancing.
With an increase in the number of phase levels, diffraction effi-
ciency improves. As compared in Fig. 2, 256 phase level beam
steering gratings gain more power efficiency than binary ones
by eliminating symmetrical first order and some other higher
orders. Considering that power efficiency is most concerned
rather than switching speed for our application, a reflective ne-
matic phase-only LCOS SLM is used (X10468-01, Hamamatsu
Photonics, 20 pitch), instead of a ferroelectric device,
which in theory can modulate light with polarization along
the LC director continuously. Beam steering was achieved by
displaying 2D 256 phase level gratings on the SLM.
Modulated laser beam bouncing off the SLM passes through
certain distance free space transmission path or a Fourier trans-
form lens to form a diffraction pattern at receiver plan. The first
order spot (the signal beam) is then focused onto a photodiode.
Towards a LCOS SLM, the maximum deflection angle of the
first order in full angle is determined by pixel pitch of SLM
device and laser wavelength , which is given by (1).
(1)
B. 256 Level Phase Grating Calculation
The SLM has 800 600 pixels. Duo to the laser beam is el-
liptical, 140 600 pixels are illuminated and active which dis-
play holograms with integer coordinates . Two dimension
phase gratings allow two dimension beam steering capability,
comparing with one dimension device reported in [32]. The re-
play field, which is related to phase-only hologram plane by the
Fourier transform, has 140 600 spatial frequency pixels in the
first order replication with integer coordinates . The re-
play field angular position coordinates can be described
by (2).
(2)
Holograms are sent to the SLM through DVI port by a com-
puter. Because of number of grayscale levels, phase holograms
are quantized in 256 levels. The grating calculation method was
FENG et al.: FREE SPACE COMMUNICATIONS WITH BEAM STEERING 2003

Fig. 3. Superimposed plot of normalized intensity in replay filed at 6 different

first order positions (6, 16, 26, 36, 46, 56) with 256 phase level gratings.

Fig. 2. Far filed comparison between binary hologram (a) and 256 phase level
hologram (b). Fig. 4. Variation of first order optical power in the whole replay field.

based on rounding modulo an idea linear phase profile for the number of phase levels and is the diffraction orders, where
required beam deflection to the nearest of linearly quantized 256 and is an integer.
available phase levels of . The hologram displayed to
steer laser beam to a spatial frequency , at the re-
ceiver plane can be expressed mathematically

(3)

C. Variations of Diffraction Efficiency in Replay Field

Beam steering using a pixelated SLM device, the resulting

diffraction efficiency in the far field has to account for spa-
tial and phase quantization, as well as the effect of dead space, (4)
which is reported in details in [25]. The intensity of each spatial
frequency pixel in the replay filed, when the first order For the practical system here, SLM uses 140 600 active
is steered to a target position , can be calculated as pixels, fill factor of the SLM is 0.98 [26] and 256 phase level
according to (4). , is number of pixels in , di- holograms are displayed. Form (4), we can see the effect of
mension respectively, is the fill factor of the SLM, is the sinc envelope in the diffraction efficiency as the position of the
2004
Fig. 5. Free space holographic beam steering transmission system configurations.
first order changes in the replay field. Applied to one dimen-
sion grating, superimposed plot of normalized intensity of each
replay field for 6 different first order target beam steering po-
sitions and the sinc envelope effect is illustrated in Fig. 3. As
shown in Fig. 3, the intensity of the first order at every position
in the replay field must be confined within the sinc envelop , and
there are still some noise orders exist even with 256 phase level
gratings. Extended to two dimensions, the relative intensity of
the first diffraction order at each of the possible 140 600 posi-
tions is shown in Fig. 4, which ranges from minimum
to maximum . It is seen that optical loss increases at
outer first order positions.
D. High Tolerance to Pixel Errors Feature
The discrete nature of an SLM and the fact that it operates in
the Fourier plane makes it relatively insensitive to pixel errors
or dark pixels, thereby offering the possibility of a high-yield
fabrication process. Define the coordinates of any point in the
Fourier plane or far field , the coordinates of hologram or
SLM plane as . Then the Fourier transform can be repre-
sented as complex amplitude in the Fourier plane
where , is number of pixels in , dimension of the SLM
respectively, is the number of phase levels, is
the index of a phase level ( is integer and a element of
and is the transmittance of the
pixel. It shows that every position in the replay field is con-
tributed by all the pixels of hologram plane and the effect of
each pixel is spread over entire replay field. Because of a great
number of pixels in a SLM, the variation in diffraction efficiency
is low duo to a small number of dark pixels or pixels errors.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION
A. Optical System
The experimental optical system to demonstrate beam
steering the two electrode tapered laser diode for free space
communication is shown in Fig. 5. The laser is directly modu-
lated by a pulse pattern generator. Polarized laser beam from
JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 31, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2013
the tapered laser is collimated by a microscope objective and
cylindrical lens. A half wave plate is used to align polarization
state of the laser beam with the direction of director of the
nematic LC of the SLM. Laser beam reflecting back from
the reflective nematic phase-only LCOS SLM (X10468-01,
Hamamatsu Photonics, 20 pitch) which is programmed
with different 256 phase level holograms and displays them
sequentially, the required far filed can be generated through
certain distance free space propagation or a Fourier transform
lens depending on transmission scale. Here, 5 meter free
space propagation from the SLM to the detection focusing
lens performs the Fourier transform, which is the maximum
length that can be achieved in our high power laser lab. Longer
distance can be simulated by adding free space loss based on
our previous 60 meter free space transmission experiment using
the tapered laser [13]. The incident half angle is less than 10
to maintain good phase modulation linearity. A variable neutral
density filter is used to simulate longer distance free space
transmission loss. At the receiving end, steered laser beam (the
far field) is focused onto an 80 diameter ultrafast InGaAs
photodetector (ALPHALAS UPD-70-IR2-P) by a 1 meter focal
length refracting telescope.
When conducting the experiment, the laser is kept with the
same driving condition mentioned in the last paragraph of II
section and the neutral density filter is set to different loss values
for different beam steering positions in the experiment.
B. Data Transmission
Data transmission eye diagrams at 1.25 Gb/s direct modula-
tion of the laser with pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS)
bit length data are measured at five different beam
steering positions. The first eye diagram were taken at angular
position (0.5 , 0.04 ) where first order is slightly off the centre
of the replay field. The 256 phase level beam steering grating,
the resulting replay field and corresponding eye dram are
shown in Fig. 6. Transmission eye diagrams at four extreme
outer corner position of the steering range are also taken re-
spectively which is shown in Fig. 7. It can be seen that error
free transmission can be achieved at these positions.
C. Optical Loss
Phase-only LCOS SLM with well designed pixel structure,
right reflection coating and phase modulation of at operating
wavelength can achieve both high light utilization efficiency
and high diffraction efficiency close to theoretical value [27].
FENG et al.: FREE SPACE COMMUNICATIONS WITH BEAM STEERING 2005

Fig. 6. (a) 256 phase level grating displayed on the SLM to steer laser beam to
angular position (0.5 , 0.04 ), (b) the replay field of the grating and (c) the eye
diagram at 1.25 Gb/s.

Light utilization efficiency is defined a ratio of the 0th order

diffraction light efficiency to the input light intensity, which
mainly depend on SLM reflectivity and diffraction loss caused
by pixel structure. Diffraction efficiency is defined as a ratio of
intensity of 1st order diffraction spot to intensity of 0th order
when no pattern is displayed.
The SLM device here is not designed for phase modulation
at the laser wavelength. The wrong reflection coating and phase
modulation depth less than result in a zero order, undiffracted
light in the center of the replay field, and a dimmer symmetrical
first order, which reduce power efficiency further. The diffrac-
tion efficiency model described in Section III-C assumes phase
modulation depth of the SLM is , which is not the case here.
A limited phase modulation depth, less than , also cuts down
diffraction efficiency, which is studied in [28]. The effect of
not enough phase depth to diffraction efficiency works inde-
pendently with other effects mentioned before and is constant
across the whole replay field for a given phase depth.
The breakdown of the optical power loss is indicated in
Fig. 7. Replay fields of beam steering at four corners of the steering range and
Table I. With ND filter loss set to 4 dB at near centre steering corresponding eye diagrams (1.25 Gb/s).
position and 0 dB at other four steering range corner positions,
optical power focused at the receiving end is measured with 1
cm diameter detector at the above five positions making sure positions are respectively 13.47 dBm, 10.22 dBm, 9.54 dBm,
all optical power before photodiode are measured. Measured 9.89 dBm and 9.77 dBm. The diffraction efficiency with
power at near-center, corner a, corner b, corner c, and corner d phase depth estimated in Section III at near-center, and other
2006
TABLE I
POWER LOSS BREAKDOWN TABLE
four extreme corner positions are and
respectively. As expected, measured diffraction loss is bigger
than predicted diffraction loss with phase. The extra loss
duo to less than phase depth is around 1.1 dB at five beam
steering positions. The experiment measurements match the
estimation made in Section III pretty much with limited phase
depth loss taken in account. Estimated 3 dB power efficiency
can be improved by using SLM device with right reflection
coating and phase depth of at the laser operating wavelength.
D. Limitation of Degree Error-Free Angular Coverage
Pixel pitch and laser wavelength determine the degree of an-
gular coverage by (1), using Liquid crystal SLM beam steering.
Duo to variation of diffraction efficiency in the replay field,
more power is required to gain error-free operation in the outer
region of the steering range than inner region. According to (4),
given the same fill factor and resolution nematic SLM, optical
loss doesn’t increase with steering range when smaller pixel
size device or longer wavelength laser is used. As the trans-
mission distance and optical path loss increase, degree of error-
free angular coverage can be limited by the optical path loss
and the power the laser can provide. For long distance free
space communication systems, to maintain error free operation
in very edge region of steering range laser output power has to
be increased. The laser was driven far from its maximum oper-
ating condition in the experiment. As the transmission distance
increases, the steering range becomes bigger. The very outer
steering range might not be used after certain transmission dis-
tance. Meanwhile angular steering range can be increased by
using smaller pixel LCOS SLM device and longer wavelength.
JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 31, NO. 12, JUNE 15, 2013
Now 8.1 pixel pitch LCOS SLM device is already commer-
cially available. [29].
V. CONCLUSION
A simple and compact two-electrode high power and high
speed tapered laser diode is a novel laser source for free space
optical communications. Ultra-high modulation efficiency en-
ables usage of standard communication components to modu-
late huge amount of optical power. With beam steering it using a
phase-only LCOS SLM, a long distance free space optical wire-
less communication system with 3 degree error-free angular
coverage and 1.25 GHz modulation bandwidth has been inves-
tigated. With LCOS SLM, aberration caused by varying free
space condition can be adaptively sensed and corrected with the
same optical system, which can improve performance of atmos-
phere free space communication systems. More power budget
can be achieved by using a right SLM for the laser wavelength
and beam steering range can also be increased by using longer
wavelength and smaller pixel LCOS device.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The first author, F. Feng, would like to thank J. Carpenter in
the group for fruitful discussions.
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Feng Feng received his B.Sc. degree in Telecommunication Engineering from
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), China (2009).
he is currently with Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge,
Cambridge UK, where he is involved in the research on free space optical wire-
less communications using holographic techniques.
Ian. H. White received the B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cam-
bridge, Cambridge, U.K., in 1980 and 1984, respectively.
He was appointed as a Research Fellow and an Assistant Lecturer with the
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., before he became a Professor of
Physics with the University of Bath, Bath, U.K., in 1990. In 1996, he joined
the University of Bristol, Bristol, U.K., where he was a Professor of optical
communications and Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic En-
gineering in 1998 and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Communications
Research. He returned to the University of Cambridge in October 2001 as a van
Eck Professor of Engineering. He is currently the Head of Photonics Research
and Master of Jesus College in the University of Cambridge. He is the author
and co-author of more than 800 publications and holds 28 patents.
He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Electronics Letters. Prof. White was a
member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Photonics Society (2008–2010).
Timothy D. Wilkinson received the Undergraduate degree from Canterbury
University, Riccarton, New Zealand, and the Ph.D. degree from Magdalene Col-
lege, Cambridge, U.K., in 1994.
He is currently a Reader of photonic engineering in the Department of En-
gineering, Cambridge University, Cambridge, and a Fellow of Jesus College.
He has been working in the field of photonics, devices, and systems for more
than 20 years. His current research has been into applications of holographic
technology. This includes new liquid crystal device structures based on sparse
arrays of vertically grown multiwall carbon nanotubes, where the tubes are used
as tiny electrodes to great 3-D electric field profiles and graded refractive index
structures, which may have applications such as switchable lenslet arrays and
3-D displays.