Zhao Che, Peng Chao, Hu Weiwei
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks, School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.
Sci Rep. 2017 Dec 18;7(1):17727. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-18040-3.
We propose a modularized architecture of a large-scale optical phased array (OPA) on a silicon on insulator (SOI) platform, using electro-optical (EO) pixels. Each pixel contains a directional coupler, a micro-ring phase shifter, and a grating optical antenna, on a compact configuration of area 50 μm × 50 μm, with optical and electrical interconnections. Moreover, we present an exemplary blueprint of an OPA consisting of 32 × 32 EO pixels, which sets the width of the main lobe as 0.04° × 0.04° and the field of view as 1.78°. By applying an over-coupled condition, the modulation efficiency and the accompanying intensity modulation are balanced, thus, the OPA performance is not severely degraded. The discussion on the fabrication tolerance shows that the proposed architecture is robust and feasible regarding the state-of-the-art fabrication process, and the performance of the main lobe width and field of view can be further optimized by a larger system size and smaller pixel size. Furthermore, the complexity of interconnections linearly depends on the number of rows and columns, making it highly scalable.
我们提出了一种基于绝缘体上硅（SOI）平台的大规模光学相控阵（OPA）的模块化架构，该架构采用电光（EO）像素。每个像素在面积为50μm×50μm的紧凑配置上包含一个定向耦合器、一个微环移相器和一个光栅光学天线，并具有光学和电气互连。此外，我们展示了一个由32×32个EO像素组成的OPA的示例蓝图，其主瓣宽度设定为0.04°×0.04°，视场为1.78°。通过应用过耦合条件，调制效率和伴随的强度调制得以平衡，因此，OPA的性能不会严重下降。关于制造公差的讨论表明，所提出的架构在当前的制造工艺方面是稳健且可行的，并且通过更大的系统尺寸和更小的像素尺寸可以进一步优化主瓣宽度和视场的性能。此外，互连的复杂性与行数和列数呈线性关系，使其具有高度的可扩展性。
