Patent ID: 8907288

Claim:
An electro-optic (EO) sensor, comprising: an objective optical system that forms an image within a field of view at an image plane; a spatial light modulator (SLM) positioned at or near the image plane, said spatial light modulator comprising an array of addressable elements to independently and selectively attenuate optical radiation within different portions of the field of view; an optical focusing array comprising at least four optical focusing elements that decompose the field of view into at least four sub-fields, each said sub-field corresponding to a plurality of SLM addressable elements; a sub-field directing array that tilts the selected optical radiation in each said sub-field by a tilt angle, in a first tilt mode said sub-field directing array configured to provide at least four different tilt angles; a focusing optic that focuses the optical radiation at a common image plane that is a relayed version of the image plane, in said first tilt mode said focusing optic directing the tilted optical radiation to form at least four spatially separated sub-regions at the common image plane, each said sub-region corresponding to one or more sub-fields; and a multi-cell imaging detector positioned at or near the common image plane, each said cell comprising at least one pixel element that converts incident optical radiation into an electrical signal, in said first tilt mode each said sub-region being mapped to a different detector cell, wherein the SLM digitally scans the FOV to select different portions of the FOV to map onto the different detector cells.