High-Speed Data Transmission with Beam-Steering using Silicon Optical Phased Array

Abstract

Optical wireless data transmission is an emerging complementary technology compared to the radio frequency transmission in specific fields. Silicon based solid-state optical phased array (OPA) has a large advantage on the entire system size, low power consumption and high speed operation. The designed radiator of OPA has 16 channels of grating array with each grating having 20μm length and etch depth of 70nm. Grating array radiator has 2μm pitch achieving ±22.7° beam steering angle. Radiator’s output beam has a beam divergence angle of 4° and 6° for each longitudinal and vertical direction. With the designed OPA, we have demonstrated a 5Gbps data transmission in a free-space range of 30cm. Eye diagram was achieved at center and full steered beam position by phase shifting. The extinction ratio of the transmitted eye-diagram was about 7dB verifying that OPA is a promising technology for high-speed wireless data transmission.