Correcting undesired distortions or aberrations and generating desired wavefronts in optical imaging, sensing, signaling and other applications based on bi-valued walsh functions

A method for operating an optical system having an adaptive control, comprising:

• applying actuator element control signals to actuator elements at different locations of an optical wavefront modifier to modify at least a spatial phase pattern of an optical wavefront of an optical input signal to produce a modified optical signal having a modified optical wavefront, wherein, the actuator elements are operated to effectuate respective local phase values at different locations of the modified optical wavefront;
• measuring the modified optical signal to obtain an optical sensor signal containing information of light intensities measured at different locations on the modified optical wavefront;
• adjusting performance metrics based on the measured light intensities at different locations of the modified optical wavefront to determine Walsh code coefficients assigned to a number of bi-valued Walsh codes, based on a relationship between each measured light intensity and a corresponding Walsh code coefficient;
• providing an adaptive control based on the Walsh code coefficients and the corresponding bi-valued Walsh codes over the actuator elements at different locations of the optical wavefront modifier, respectively, based on the information of the measured light intensities at different locations on the modified optical wavefront in the optical sensor signal to correct distortions in the optical wavefront of the optical input signal.

An optical system having an adaptive control, comprising:

• an optical wavefront modifier configured to modify at least a spatial phase pattern of an optical wavefront of an optical input signal to produce a modified optical signal having a modified optical wavefront, the optical wavefront modifier including an array of actuator elements at different locations each operable to modify at least a local phase of the optical wavefront of the modified optical signal, the actuator elements coupled to receive actuator element control signals, respectively, to effectuate respective local phase values at different locations of the modified optical wavefront, wherein the optical wavefront modifier operates the actuator elements to modulate amplitudes of local phase values caused by the actuator elements at different modulation frequencies;
• an optical sensor unit located in an optical path of the modified optical signal from the adaptive optical wavefront modifier and configured to convert the modified optical signal into an optical sensor signal containing information of light intensities measured at different locations on the modified optical wavefront and information on modulated amplitudes of local phase values at the different modulation frequencies;
• and
• a control electronic unit coupled to the optical sensor unit to receive the optical sensor signal and coupled to the optical wavefront modifier to generate the actuator element control signals based on the optical sensor signal, the control electronic unit configured to generate different sets of the actuator element control signals based on different sets of bi-valued Walsh codes, respectively, to generate different sets of local phase values at the optical wavefront modifier that are adaptive to information of the measured light intensities in the optical sensor signal received at the optical sensor unit, wherein the control electronic unit operates to adjust performance metrics based on the measured light intensities at different locations of the modified optical wavefront to determine Walsh code coefficients respectively assigned to the bi-valued Walsh codes based on a relationship between each measured light intensity and a corresponding Walsh code coefficient and to generate the actuator element control signals to minimize oscillations at the modulation frequencies that are measured at the optical sensor unit.