Query: Large-Scale Silicon Photonic Circuits for Optical Phased Arrays

Candidate papers:

abstract: We review recent advances in integrated large scale optical phased arrays. The design and fabrication of large scale optical phased arrays using silicon photonic circuits are discussed from device designs including the directional couplers, thermo optic phase shifters, and optical nanoantennas, to system studies including phased array synthesis and noise analysis. By taking advantage of the well developed silicon complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication technology, several large scale integrated silicon photonic phased arrays are demonstrated, including two passive phased arrays (64 x 64 and 32 x 32) with the ability to generate complex holographic images, an 8 x 8 active phased array for dynamic optical beamforming, and an 8 x 8 active antenna array with amplitude apodization. These optical phased array demonstrations, with up to 12 000 integrated optical elements, represent the largest and densest silicon photonic circuits demonstrated to date.
author_names: Jie Sun

Erman Timurdogan

Ami Yaacobi

Zhan Su

Ehsan S Hosseini

David B Cole

Michael Robert Watts
title: Large Scale Silicon Photonic Circuits for Optical Phased Arrays
venue: IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics
year: 2014

abstract: We present several optical phased arrays enabled by state of the art large scale silicon photonic integration which could find potential applications in optical switching, optical communications, light detection and ranging, and holography.
author_names: Jie Sun

Ami Yaacobi

Erman Timurdogan

Zhan Su

David B Cole

Ehsan S Hosseini

Michele Moresco

Gerald Leake

Douglas D Coolbaugh

Michael Robert Watts
title: Large Scale Integrated Silicon Photonic Circuits for Optical Phased Arrays
year: 2014

abstract: The realization of a low cost and robust optical beam steering platform is a key enabler for a number of applications, including light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and free space optical communications (FSO) Optical phased arrays (OPAs) have emerged as a promising solution, due to advancements in photonic integrated circuits (PIC) foundry processes, which have enabled high precision fabrication of PICs with a large number of components [1] [3] In order to meet steering range and directivity requirements in systems such as autonomous vehicles, a clear path to scaling OPAs to millimeter scale apertures with thousands of tight pitched antenna elements is critical. As the element count grows, independent phase control for each element becomes crucial since maintaining coherence between elements becomes more difficult due to process variations. Moreover, independent control allows for unique system capabilities, such as multi beam formation and converging/adaptive beams, which makes OPAs a particularly attractive solid state beamforming technology.
author_names: Taehwan Kim

Pavan Bhargava

Christopher Vincent Poulton

Jelena Notaros

Ami Yaacobi

Erman Timurdogan

Christopher Baiocco

Nicholas M Fahrenkopf

S A Kruger

Tat Ngai

Yukta P Timalsina

Michael Robert Watts

Vladimir M Stojanovic
title: 29.5 A Single Chip Optical Phased Array in a 3D Integrated Silicon Photonics/65nm CMOS Technology
venue: 2019 IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC)
year: 2019

abstract: Today, generic foundry silicon photonic platforms use only one waveguide layer, implemented in the top silicon (Si) device layer of a silicon on insulator (SOI) wafer. However, very large scale integrated photonic circuits. comprising of hundreds or even thousands of devices, require complex on chip optical routing networks that become difficult or impractical to implement using only one Si waveguide layer because of waveguide crossing loss, crossing crosstalk, optical power handling limitations, and/or waveguide loss. Such very large scale integrated photonic circuits enable applications in, for example, optical switch fabrics and optical phased arrays. Integrated photonic platforms that have several waveguide layers make possible three dimensional (3D) on chip optical routing to overcome the limitations of a single layer. For example, multilayer platforms support extraordinarily low loss over/under pass types of crossings, wherein a waveguide in the topmost (bottommost) layer can pass over (under) many waveguides in the lower (upper) levels.
author_names: Joyce K S Poon

Wesley D Sacher
title: Multilayer silicon nitride on silicon photonic platforms for three dimensional integrated photonic devices and circuits
venue: 2017 75th Annual Device Research Conference (DRC)
year: 2017

abstract: This talk presents my group's progress in foundry compatible multilayer silicon nitride on silicon integrated photonic platforms. Silicon nitride enables improved passive photonic components that can be integrated with active components in the silicon layer, including highly efficient modulators, high speed photodetectors, and potentially hybrid lasers. Multilayer platforms also allow for new device geometries for grating couplers and polarization rotator splitters that take advantage of the strong optical coupling between the waveguide levels. Further, multilayer platforms make possible extraordinarily low loss over/under pass types of crossings. Taken together, these capabilities make multilayer silicon nitride on silicon photonic platforms ideal for the implementation of very large scale, three dimensional silicon photonic circuits, which are needed for applications such as optical switching and phased arrays.
author_names: Joyce K S Poon
title: Multilayer silicon integrated photonic platforms for 3D photonic devices and circuits
venue: 2017 IEEE Photonics Conference (IPC)
year: 2017

abstract: This talk presents my group's progress in foundry compatible multilayer silicon nitride on silicon integrated photonic platforms. Silicon nitride enables improved passive photonic components that can be integrated with active components in the silicon layer, including highly efficient modulators, high speed photodetectors, and potentially hybrid lasers. Multilayer platforms also allow for new device geometries for grating couplers and polarization rotator splitters that take advantage of the strong optical coupling between the waveguide levels. Further, multilayer platforms make possible extraordinarily low loss over/under pass types of crossings. Taken together, these capabilities make multilayer silicon nitride on silicon photonic platforms ideal for the implementation of very large scale, three dimensional silicon photonic circuits, which are needed for applications such as optical switching and phased arrays.
author_names: Joyce K S Poon
title: Multilayer silicon integrated photonic platforms for 3D photonic devices and circuits
year: 2017

abstract: Optical phased arrays are a promising beam steering technology for ultra small solid state lidar and free space communication systems. Long range, high performance arrays require a large beam emission area densely packed with thousands of actively phase controlled, power hungry light emitting elements. To date, such large scale phased arrays have been impossible to realize since current demonstrated technologies would operate at untenable electrical power levels. Here we show a multi pass photonic platform integrated into a large scale phased array that lowers phase shifter power consumption by nearly 9 times. The multi pass structure decreases the power consumption of a thermo optic phase shifter to a \rm P}_\pi $Pp of {1.7}\rm mW/\pi $1.7mW/p without sacrificing speed or optical bandwidth. Using this platform, we demonstrate a silicon photonic phased array containing 512 actively controlled elements, consuming only 1.9 W of power while performing 2D beam steering over a {70}\circ \times {6}\circ $70x6 field of view. Our results demonstrate a path forward to building scalable phased arrays containing thousands of active elements.
author_names: Steven A Miller

You-Chia Chang

Christopher T Phare

Min Chul Shin

Moshe Zadka

Samantha Pamela Roberts

Brian Stern

Xingchen Ji

Aseema Mohanty

Oscar A Jimenez Gordillo

Utsav D Dave

Michal Lipson
title: Large scale optical phased array using a low power multi pass silicon photonic platform
year: 2020

abstract: multi pass silicon photonic platform: supplementary material STEVEN A. MILLER, YOU CHIA CHANG, CHRISTOPHER T. PHARE, MIN CHUL SHIN, MOSHE ZADKA, SAMANTHA P. ROBERTS, BRIAN STERN, XINGCHEN JI, ASEEMA MOHANTY, OSCAR A. JIMENEZ GORDILLO, UTSAV D. DAVE, AND MICHAL LIPSON Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA Department of Photonics and Institute of Electro Optical Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan contributed equally to work
author_names: M A

P T
title: Large scale optical phased array using a low power multi pass silicon photonic platform: supplementary material
year: 2019

abstract: In the current work we present Si and SiN combined photonic built up for optical phased arrays (OPAs) and other large area photonic integrated circuits. We report low loss co integrated SiN waveguides and nearly lossless vertical transitions between Si and SiN layers, as well as efficient Si thermo optical phase shifter module. OPA consisting of 64 optical antennas forming highly collimated beam with 0.4deg x 0.47deg divergence is reported. By changing input wavelength, solid state beam steering of 0deg 10deg is achieved.
author_names: Aleksandrs Marinins

Sarvagya Dwivedi

Jon Oyvind Kjellman

Sarp Kerman

Tangla David

Bruno Figeys

Roelof Jansen

Deniz Sabuncuoglu Tezcan

Xavier Rottenberg

Philippe Soussan
title: Silicon photonics co integrated with silicon nitride for optical phased arrays
year: 2020

abstract: Optical phased arrays (OPAs) implemented in integrated photonic circuits could enable a variety of 3D sensing, imaging, illumination, and ranging applications, and their convergence in new LIDAR technology. However, current integrated OPA approaches do not scale in control complexity, power consumption, and optical efficiency to the large aperture sizes needed to support medium to long range LIDAR. We present the serpentine optical phased array (SOPA) a new OPA concept that addresses these fundamental challenges and enables architectures that scale up to large apertures. The SOPA is based on a serially interconnected array of low loss grating waveguides and supports fully passive, two dimensional (2D) wavelength controlled beam steering. A fundamentally space efficient design that folds the feed network into the aperture also enables scalable tiling of SOPAs into large apertures with a high fill factor. We experimentally demonstrate the first SOPA, using a 1450 1650 nm wavelength sweep to produce 16,500 addressable spots in a 27x610 array. We also demonstrate, for the first time, far field interference of beams from two separate OPAs on a single silicon photonic chip, as an initial step towards long range computational imaging LIDAR based on novel active aperture synthesis schemes.
author_names: Nathan Dostart

Bohan Zhang

Anatol Khilo

Michael Brand

Kenaish Al Qubaisi

Deniz Onural

Daniel Feldkhun

Kelvin H Wagner

Milos A Popovic
title: Serpentine optical phased arrays for scalable integrated photonic lidar beam steering
year: 2020