Abstract

Optical beam steering has been pursued in the past decade, largely motivated by its potential applications including optical communication and laser radar systems. Optical phased array (OPA) is a promising beam steering method, which has the potential advantages of low cost, chip scale, high resolution, high accuracy and fast scanning [1]. However, a main problem with current OPAs is the limited scanning angle. Steering angle of OP As based on out-of-plane emitting planar waveguide gratings is typically < 50 degrees. End-fire OPA has a larger steering angle but still will be restricted to <180 degrees due to its geometry [2]. Circular OPA can provide 360-degree beam steering [3-4], but the existing proposals require large number of control elements which makes it very hard to realize.

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