Sixty-Nine-Element Voice Coil Deformable Mirror for Visible Light Communication

Abstract

To overcome the atmospheric turbulence aberration, and improve the quality of light beam in visible light communication (VLC), a compact 69-element deformable mirror (DM) using micro voice coil actuators was designed based on systematic theoretical analysis. The structural parameters of the micro voice coil actuator were optimized by electromagnetic theory and the finite element method. The DM was optimized from the aspects of thermal deformation, response time, coupling coefficient, and other parameters. Finally, wavefront fitting and residual calculation were completed according to the influence function. The optimized voice coil deformable mirror (VCDM) has a large phase stroke, good thermal stability, a short response time of less than 0.7 ms, and a large first resonance of 2045 Hz. The fitting residuals of the VCDM for the first 10 Zernike modes with a PV value of 8 μm are all below 10 nm (RMS). Compared with a similar DM, the obtained results from our compact VCDM indicate that it has a higher wavefront fitting precision. VCDM corrected complex random aberrations in the VLC scenario and improved the coupling efficiency of the signal beam, proving that the compact VCDM with high performance and low cost has a good application prospect in VLC systems.