Optical Phased Array with Reduced Phase Tuning Resolution

Tianchi Ye, Qixin Liu, Yiwei Zou, Li Jin, Junbo Feng, Min Tan

Abstract: This paper studies the minimum thermo-tuning resolution for calibrating and steering the 1-D optical phased array (OPA) through simulation and experiment. Through simulation, we determined the factors, including antenna pitch d, wavelength λ, and calibration procedure, that affect the phase tuning resolution requirement of 1-D OPAs. Simulation results show that the resolution can be reduced to 2 bits without degrading the beam quality. Furthermore, an OPA with 128 antennas is implemented. Experimental results validate that 2 bits resolution is sufficient to calibrate the 1-D OPA with the most power concentrated at the target direction.