Patent ID: 6965713

Claim:
An optical beam generating and shaping device, comprising: a radiation source for producing optical radiation bearing information to be communicated to a remote receive terminal, a fiber link consisting of a single multimode optical fiber, means coupled to the radiation source for launching a beam of the optical radiation bearing the information having extended angular spectrum into a first cross-section of said multimode optical fiber, and for initially exciting a plurality of modes in said multimode optical fiber, mode mixing means engaging a portion of said multimode optical fiber between ends of said multimode optical fiber, for providing energy exchange between the fiber modes and therefore multiplication of the modes initially excited in the multimode optical fiber by the means for launching the radiation beam into the first cross-section of the multimode optical fiber, and a telescope objective lens optically coupled to a second cross-section of the multimode optical fiber and providing concentration of optical radiation output transmitted from the multimode optical fiber over a free-space optical link, as required at a receive aperture of the remote receive terminal, wherein the multimode optical fiber has core diameter d satisfying the equation d/F=H/L, where: d>δ; δ—lateral of a point-spread-function that would be formed in the area of the fiber cross-section location by the telescope objective lens from a light beam with plane wavefront; F—telescope objective lens focal length; H—require illuminated spot diameter in a receive aperture plane of the remote receive terminal, cm; L—distance from the telescope objective lens to the receive aperture, cm; and L>>F.