Ulusoy, E.Onural, L.Özaktaş, Haldun M.2015-07-282015-07-282011-10-191084-7529http://hdl.handle.net/11693/12100Imperfections and nonrobust behavior of practical multilevel spatial light modulators (SLMs) degrade the performance of many proposed full-complex amplitude modulation schemes. We consider the use of more robust binary SLMs for this purpose. We propose a generic method, by which, out of K binary (or 1 bit) SLMs of size M × N, we effectively create a new 2K -level (or K bit) SLM of size M × N. The method is a generalization of the well-known concepts of bit plane representation and decomposition for ordinary gray scale digital images and relies on forming a properly weighted superposition of binary SLMs. When K is sufficiently large, the effective SLM can be regarded as a full-complex one. Our method is as efficient as possible from an information theoretical perspective. A 4f system is discussed as a possible optical implementation. This 4f system also provides a means for eliminating the undesirable higher diffraction orders. The components of the 4f system can easily be customized for different production technologies.EnglishAmplitude modulationInformation theoryLight modulationScales (weighing Instruments)Article10.1364/JOSAA.28.002310