Abstract: Liquid crystal based beam steering technology has advantages of high accuracy，low power consumption and random-access pointing etc. Firstly, the worldwide research status was introduced. Secondly, the basic principle and performance indexes，in company with the research progress and bottleneck, of beam steering system based on liquid crystal were described in detail. Combining liquid crystal material with wide-angle step-steering devices, a few techniques for wide-angle beam steering were compared. Finally, the development trend of novel liquid crystal based beam steering technology was previewed.