Abstract

A phased array telescope is an array of optical telescopes whose images are coherently combined so as to achieve the resolution of a single but much larger telescope. Design of a wide field of view phased array imaging system is considerably more difficult than phased array beam transmission telescopes such as PHASAR,¹ which has no field of view. In addition to maintaining optical phase to a fraction of a wavelength on the optic axis, an imaging telescope must accurately control phase and align the images from all telescopes to within a fraction of a resolution element over the whole field of view simultaneously. This requires lateral pupil geometry³ that is extremely close to the ideal.

© 1988 Optical Society of America