This paper explores the history of the development of electro-optical nonmechanical beam steering since 1985.¹ Most of the paper discusses nonmechanical beam steering for narrow band systems. The authors include broadband nonmechanical beam steering, even though progress in nonmechanical broadband optical beam steering has been limited.

Although there are many studies concerning the estimation of wind potential in different locations of Iran, an adequate evaluation of wind power for onshore locations of this country has not been investigated yet. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the potential of onshore wind in the south of Iran along the Gulf of Oman by comparing three Weibull numerical methods. In the first step, it became clear that the maximum likelihood method (MLM) compared to other methods represented the actual wind data with the lowest error rate and therefore it was selected as an accurate statistical distribution to model the wind speed of the investigated location. Using the MLM, the estimation of wind speed characteristics as well as the techno-economic evaluation of different wind turbines has been investigated. It was concluded that both technically and economically the studied area does not have sufficient wind power for the development of large-scale or grid-connected wind turbines. However, it may have enough power for non-grid-connected mechanical applications, such as wind generators for water pumping. Therefore, in the last part of this paper, an investigation of water pumping potential of the studied site by using adequate and modern wind turbines with lower start-up wind speed was recommended for future studies. Furthermore, it was suggested that the current methodology used in this research could be employed and extended in future studies to evaluate the wind potential of all onshore locations of Iran including onshore locations along the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea.

A polarization-independent electro-optical (EO) laser beam steerer based on a bulk relaxor ferroelectric polycrystalline Pb(Mg_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃-PbTiO₃ (PMN-PT) was developed in this study to steer light ranging from visible to mid-IR wavelengths. A large number of the resolvable spots was achieved with this EO steerer. A Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was employed to determine the refractive index of the polycrystalline PMN-PT over a wide range of optical wavelengths. Besides measuring the transmission of this material, the capacitance bridge analysis was used to characterize the effect of temperature on the dielectric constant of PMN-PT. The performance of the steerer over a variety of wavelengths was simulated using COMSOL Multiphysics. The deflection angle for the wavelengths of 532, 632.8, 1550, and 4500 nm was measured in the lab in terms of mrad.mm/kV at two different temperatures and compared to the simulation results. The quadratic Kerr electro-optic coefficient and the halfwave electric field were determined for those four wavelengths at two different temperatures. The results showed polycrystalline PMN-PT has a large quadratic EO coefficient for visible light, almost as large in the near IR, but drops significantly in the mid-IR. No significant temperature dependency for the EO coefficients was observed for any of those four wavelengths.