FREE-SPACE OPTICAL MODULE CONFIGURATION USING A GUIDE-FRAME ASSEMBLY METHOD

A new assembly method is described for easy construction of optical mo dules consisting of guide frames, spacer frames, and a housing frame. This method is used to assemble a two-dimensional optical-fiber collim ator and a digital discrete correlator, which are fundamental parts of free-space optical computing systems. We show that a multistage optic al system can be constructed simply by stacking of several optical fun ctional blocks. Moreover, these compact modules do not need a conventi onal optical bench, they are compact, and assembly time is reduced. We demonstrated by experiment that the accuracy of optical modules assem bled with this method is within the specifications of the optical syst em.