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 20. m length and etch depth of 70nm. Grating array radiator has 2. m 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.