Abstract

An optical phased array (OPA), especially a two-dimensional (2D) OPA, suffers from the trade-off among steering range, beam width, and the number of antennas. Aperiodic 2D array designs currently aimed to reduce the number of antennas and reduce grating lobes within a wide range fall short when an aperture approaches millimeter size. A circular OPA design is proposed to address this issue. The circular design substantially reduces the number of antennas while achieving the same wide steering range and narrow beam width of optimized aperiodic 2D OPA designs. Its efficient suppression of grating lobes, the key to a wide steering range with minimal number of antennas and large antenna spacing, is theoretically studied and validated by simulation. The novel, to the best of our knowledge, design allows less than 100 antennas, orders of magnitude reduction, for millimeter size aperture OPA designs. It paves the way for commercialization by significantly reducing control complexity and power consumption.

© 2023 Optica Publishing Group

Two-dimensional single-lobe Si photonic optical phased array with minimal antennas using a non-uniform large spacing array design

Yulong Xue, Qihao Zhang, Yangming Ren, Yufang Lei, Xiaochen Sun, and Lingxuan Zhang
Appl. Opt. 61(24) 7158-7162 (2022)

Effective half-wavelength pitch optical phased array design for aliasing-free 2D beam steering

Yufang Lei, Lingxuan Zhang, Yulong Xue, Yangming Ren, Qihao Zhang, Wenfu Zhang, and Xiaochen Sun
Appl. Opt. 61(32) 9423-9428 (2022)

High-speed 2D beam steering based on a thin-film lithium niobate optical phased array with a large field of view

Wenlei Li, Xu Zhao, Jianghao He, Hao Yan, Bingcheng Pan, Zichen Guo, Xiang’e Han, Jingye Chen, Daoxin Dai, and Yaocheng Shi
Photon. Res. 11(11) 1912-1918 (2023)

Fast and wide-range optical beam steering with ultralow side lobes by applying an optimized multi-circular optical phased array

Fangzheng Zhang, Daocheng Zhang, and Shilong Pan
Appl. Opt. 57(18) 4977-4984 (2018)

Large steering range and low-loss integrated optical phased array with SiN-Si dual-layer non-uniform antenna

Mengyuan Ye, Yang Chen, Jianping Li, Ye Deng, Jian Chen, Weilun Zhang, Yunlong Li, Kailin Hu, Cheng Xu, Li Liu, and Yu Yu
Opt. Express 31(26) 44564-44574 (2023)