Browsing by Author "Stern, Brian"

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Large-scale optical phased array using a low-power multi-pass silicon photonic platform
(2020-01-20)
Miller, Steven A.
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Chang, You-Chia
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Phare, Christopher T.
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Shin, Min Chul
;
Zadka, Moshe
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 P-pi of 1.7 mW/pi 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 degrees x 6 degrees field of view. Our results demonstrate a path forward to building scalable phased arrays containing thousands of active elements. (C) 2020 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement
Scalable low-power silicon photonic platform for all-solid-state beam steering
(2019-01-01)
Chang, You-Chia
;
Miller, Steven A.
;
Phare, Christopher T.
;
Shin, Min Chul
;
Zadka, Moshe
Solid-state beam steering is the key to realize miniature, mass-producible LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) and free-space communication systems without using any moving parts. The huge power consumption required in solid-state beam steering, however, prevents this technology from further scaling. Here we show two different approaches to enable low-power solid-state beam steering. In the first approach, we use spatial-mode multiplexing to reduce the power consumption of the phase shifters in a large-scale optical phased array. We show an improvement of phase shifter power consumption by nearly 9 times, without sacrificing optical bandwidth or operation speed. Using this approach, we demonstrate 2D beam steering with a silicon photonic phased array containing 512 actively controlled elements. This phased array consumes only 1.9 W of power while steering over a 70 degrees x 6 degrees field of view. This power consumption is at least an order of magnitude lower compared to other demonstrated large-scale active phased arrays. In the second approach, we achieve 2D beam steering with a switchable emitter array and a metalens that collimates the emitted light. The power consumption of this approach scales logarithmically with the number of emitters and therefore favors large-scale systems. This approach allows straightforward feedback control and better robustness to environmental temperature change. Our approaches demonstrate a path forward to build truly scalable beam steering devices.