Influence of optical dome for airborne laser communication beam far-field divergence

When the center of the dome inner and outer concentric spherical surfaces and the gimbal joint of the airborne laser communication antenna are not coincidence, the influence of asymmetry dome to communication beam far-field divergence angle for different transmitting angles is analyzed. The simulations shows that, at a maximum off-axis transmitting angle 54°, a K9 spherical dome with a 200mm diameter and 5mm thickness makes the communication beam far-field divergence angle expands to 5.27~6.46mrad from 126μrad. The divergence angle variation purely introduced by the dome manufacturing precision is very tiny, and can be ignored compared the variation introduced by the dome optical power. A lens with spherical surfaces is used to compensate the far-field divergence angle change, and after the compensation the far-field divergence angle of the beam on the whole range of transmitting angles is reduced to no more than 600μrad.