Omnidirectional beam steering using aperiodic optical phased array with high error margin.

We propose a pattern-search-like algorithm to design an aperiodic optical phased array for extensive applications in light detection and ranging and free-space communication. The designed phased array with 128 isotropic elements achieves a scan range, peak side-lobe level, minimum beam width, and mean pitch of ± 82°, -14.34 dB, 0.