Design for segmented optical antenna with hexagon-shaped spherical sub-mirrors based on three-dimensional vector rotation and reflection theories

Segmented antenna is an effective method to cut costs of the large-aperture optical antenna. A 10 m-aperture segmented antenna model is established by using three-dimensional (3-D) vector rotation theory. Ray tracing and transmission characteristic analysis are performed based on 3-D vector reflection theory. The receiving efficiency of the segmented antenna composed of 36 spherical sub-mirrors is 80.19%. Results of the optical aberrations caused by tilt ray incidence and defocusing of the secondary reflector indicate that the performance of the proposed segmented antenna with spherical sub-mirrors is very approximate to that of the segmented antenna with paraboloidal sub-mirrors, and hence of great significance for realization of large-aperture optical antenna.