This paper presents a high-directionality optical grating antenna for chip-level LiDAR applications. The antenna, designed on a silicon-nitride-nitride platform, consists of two vertically stacked grating layers with a nitride waveguide layer in between. By optimizing the grating periods, duty cycles, and the relative offset between the grating layers using a particle swarm optimization algorithm, a directionality of 87.8% (0.56 dB) at 1550 nm wavelength and a minimum coupling loss of 1.7 dB were achieved. The performance of the antenna was demonstrated in a chip-to-chip transceiver configuration using a coherent detection system. With a transmitter output power of 10 dBm, the system achieved a signal-to-noise ratio of 17.7 dB and 13.2 dB at screen distances of 20 m and 40 m, respectively. These results highlight the potential of the proposed antenna for long-range, chip-level LiDAR applications.
Optical phased array (OPA) has been widely employed across various applications, including light detection and ranging. Nevertheless, OPA faces significant limitations, such as excessive power consumption, complex control systems, and challenging packaging formats, which hinder its further development. Focal plane arrays (FPAs) have garnered increasing attention due to their absence of these drawbacks. However, FPAs currently face a dilemma as their ranging performance fails to meet application requirements. To address this issue, this paper presents a novel structure featuring small-scale receiving array and high directional antenna design. Utilizing this chip, we showcase a scanning range of 5.98° and a coherent detection capability of 6 meters.
Distributed Feedback (DFB) semiconductor lasers with low Relative Intensity Noise (RIN) are in demand for high-power and narrow-linewidth applications. However, there is a lack of research on the compatibility of these features, together with RIN degradation at high temperature. In this paper, the RIN characteristics of InGaAsP multi-quantum-well DFB lasers are studied through theoretical calculation and numerical investigation, the results of which are very close. Based on numerical simulation, the epitaxy layers and optical cavity structures of DFB lasers are optimized to improve the RIN performance. The simulation results show that a high-power laser with an output power up to 400 mW and a narrow-linewidth laser with a linewidth below 300 kHz can obtain a peak RIN below -166 dB/Hz and -160 dB/Hz from 0.1 to 20 GHz, respectively, meeting the requirements of light sources for microwave photonics system and coherent optical transceiver system. In terms of thermal effect, buried heterostructure lasers could effectively mitigate the deterioration of RIN compared to ridge waveguide lasers due to better temperature characteristics.
Optical phased array has the advantages of low cost, small size, and high stability. It has broad application prospects in Lidar, free space optical communication, and so on. Among all of them, SiN photonic integrated circuit platforms have received much research. Compared to Si, SiN has smaller optical nonlinear effects and waveguide losses, allowing higher optical power to be emitted. However, the refractive index of SiN is smaller than Si. The pitch of SiN-based waveguides and waveguide grating antennas is larger to reduce crosstalk. This results in a smaller field of view for SiN optical phased arrays and reduces the power ratio of the main lobe to the total emission. In this work, we spaced two SiN waveguides with different propagation constants to reduce the coupling strength between adjacent waveguides. In the range of 1500 nm to 1600 nm, the crosstalk is smaller than -29 dB at the waveguide pitch of 2 μm. In this case, the field of view of the optical phased array reaches 43.89° × 8.47° (ψ × θ). For the optical phased array with 512 channels and a 1 mm long antenna, the divergence angle is 0.078° × 0.086° (Δψ × Δθ). The small spot achieves higher resolution and high point cloud density.
Optical phased array has great potential in the fields of light detection and ranging, free-space optical communication, laser imaging and biosensors due to their excellent characteristics such as all-solid-state structure, fast scanning speed, good stability, high resolution and low cost. According to the radar equation, the transmit power will directly determine the maximum ranging distance of optical phased arrays. Limited by nonlinear effects and damage threshold, it is difficult to further increase the input optical power of Si-based OPA above 30 dB. Therefore, fully utilizing the input optical power of OPA is an important issue in the research. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel three-layer silicon antenna for OPA, which consists of a upside grating layer, a waveguide layer and a downside grating layer from top to bottom. In the simulation, we found that the upward directivity of the antenna is greater than 60% in a large wavelength range of 1413 nm to 1875 nm. In addition, the maximum upward directivity of the antenna is 94.68% at 1599nm. The above result is beneficial to increase the output power of the phased array and eliminate the blind area in the field of view when the beam is scanned to the point of destructive interference. Overall, the above results show that the design proposed in this paper has great potential for application.
Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technique is always a building block in the fields of sensing, mapping and autonomous driving navigation. Beam steering devices, which are used for light emission and reception, play a key role in LiDAR system. Lens-assisted beam-steering (LABS) is one of the most competitive candidates among various beam steering technologies. Compared with conventional integrated optical phased array (OPA), LABS unit is with lower optical loss and meanwhile lower control complexity. In this paper, we demonstrate a highly integrated LABS chip based on micro-ring optical switch array with a wide field of view (FoV, 30°×40°) and a narrow beam divergence (<0.1°). A 32×32 micro-ring optical switch array connected with a 1×1024 optical antenna array is integrated in the silicon photonic chip with an overall size of 6×14 mm2. Incident light is routed to one antenna by the micro-ring optical switch array and emitted into the free space, and the emergent light is collimated and steered by a cylindrical lens fixed above the optical antenna array subsequently. On this basis, one-dimensional steering is achieved by switching light to different antennas, while steering in the other dimension is realized via wavelength tuning. Under this circumstance, only two micro-ring switches need to be turned on at one time, leading to a significant reduction of optical loss and control complexity of the proposed chip. Notably, our work demonstrates the feasibility of large-scale integration of optical switch array within LABS chip by adopting compact micro-ring switches, paving a new path for miniatured beam scanners.
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