Control method for the optical components of a dynamically reconfigurable optical platform.

We propose a control method for the optical components of a dynamically reconfigurable optical platform, the ternary optical computer (TOC). The optical components are made of liquid-crystal cell arrays (LCCAs) and polarizers, so the control method is for generating the pilot signals of the LCCAs to meet user demands. In this work, we first briefly introduce the TOC theory, the modules in the TOC monitor system, and the addressing of these LCCAs. Then we focus on the method for generating the control information (CI) of optical components, i.e., the encoder and the operator in the TOC according to the operands and the information about the basic operating units needed by an operation. In addition, we define data structures, some of which store the information to generate the CI and others that mainly store the generated CI. Finally we provide an example to verify the proposed method and conduct an experiment to generate the LCCA CI. The results demonstrate the correctness and feasibility of the method.