Patent ID: 11971589
Assignee: THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Field: Optics (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 0:
1. A device, comprising:
a plurality of vertically stacked layers including a first layer configured to emit light at a first wavelength and a second layer disposed above the first layer and configured to emit light at a second wavelength different from the first wavelength; and
a control circuit coupled to the plurality of vertically stacked layers,
wherein each of the plurality of vertically stacked layers includes:
an array of light emitters located at different locations, each light emitter operable to produce an optical beam that is associated with a location of the light emitter and is different from another optical beam produced by another light emitter due to the location of the light emitter being different from a location of another light emitter;
an optical projection device located at a fixed position relative to the array of light emitters in optical paths of the optical beams from the array of light emitters, the optical projection device operable to direct each optical beam to a particular beam direction that is associated with a location of each light emitter relative to the optical projection device and is different from any other beam directions, the optical projection device operable to collect received light, the optical projection device structured to include no moving part; and
a plurality of light detectors arranged in rows and columns on the same focal plane as the light emitters and spatially interleaved with the light emitters, the plurality of light detectors configured to detect the received light, wherein transmission of the an optical beam by the array of light emitters and reception of the received light by the plurality of light detectors occur simultaneously,
wherein the control circuit is coupled to the array of light emitters and operable to turn on or off the light emitters to project one or more optical beams from the light emitters to the optical projection device which in turn directs the received one or more optical beams to corresponding one or more particular beam directions, wherein the control circuit is operable to selectively turn on and off different laser diodes to project the different optical beams from the selected laser diodes to form a desired beam scanning pattern to effectuate an effect of scanning a single optical beam in different beam directions,
wherein the one or more optical beams from the first and second layers are steered independently of or together with each other by the control circuit.