Abstract: In an optical emitter device, when point emitters are placed on the focal plane of a lens system, each individual point emitter will point to a specific free space angle depending on the position of the point emitter relative to the longitudinal central axis of the lens system. Point emitters comprising end-fire tapers combined with both a turning mirror and a micro-lens provide improved performance, because, unlike grating couplers, end-fire tapers enable uniform broadband operation with all possible polarization states. A turning mirror may be added to direct the light emission from the end-fire tapers to vertically upwards, which enables both a two-dimensional point emitter array and a more streamlined assembly process.

Abstract: An optical phased array comprising a row-column driving mechanism is disclosed that reduces the number of digital to analog converter (DAC) channels to the number of rows N and the total number of interface pin counts down to the number of columns plus the number of rows M+N. Disclosed herein are systems and architecture for thermal waveguide-based phase shifters which improve thermal efficiency by having multi-pass waveguides arranged proximate a heating element in a serpentine fashion, which enables an increase in phase shift without increasing the length or the power consumption of the heating element by increasing the total length of waveguide being heated by a singular heating element.

Abstract: Disclosed are integrated photonics systems including a coupling strategy to couple light in and out of optoelectronic flip-chips bonded to a photonics chip. The refined tolerances for flip-chip assembly and angled facets defined on both chips at optical couplings improve optical performance.

Abstract: Disclosed herein are systems and architecture for thermal waveguide-based phase shifters which improve thermal efficiency by having multi-pass waveguides arranged under the heating element in a serpentine fashion, with the waveguides having mismatched propagation constants. The combination allows for an increase in phase shift without increasing the length or the power consumption of the resistive heating element by increasing the total length of waveguide being heated by a singular heating element.

Abstract: Optical switch trees are commonly used to route light from one input channel to multiple possible output channels one at a time. As the number of output channels increases, the number of wire-bonding pads increases and the drive electronics becomes more complicated. The optical switch tree comprises an array of optical switches arranged in a plurality of rows of optical switches, each connected by a row bus, which are connected to a first multiplexer and a common power source; and a plurality of columns of optical switches, each connected by a column bus, which are connected to a second multiplexer and a common ground. A control processor selects one of the plurality of columns of optical switches to connect to the common ground, and selects one of the plurality of rows of optical switches to connect to the common power source, thereby selecting a single optical switch in the array of optical switches to activate.

Abstract: Disclosed herein are systems and architecture for thermal waveguide-based phase shifters which improve thermal efficiency by having multi-pass waveguides arranged under the heating element in a serpentine fashion, with the waveguides having mismatched propagation constants. The combination allows for an increase in phase shift without increasing the length or the power consumption of the resistive heating element by increasing the total length of waveguide being heated by a singular heating element.

Abstract: The optical phased array may use a grating based emitter in order to emit light out of the plane of a PIC chip from an array of output waveguides. A longer grating allows for a larger aperture in the output waveguide dimension and allows for a small spot size. However, even for the relatively thick grating layers available in production foundries, the gratings still cause light to decay within less than 0.5 mm. To reduce the grating strength, some or all of the diffraction gratings may only be provided between the output waveguides, e.g. over trenches between the output waveguides, but not over top the output waveguides, whereby the periodicity only interacts with the weaker evanescent tails of the confined mode instead of the entire cross section of the output waveguides. By forming sufficiently narrow slots in the grating layer only down to the upper cladding layer, the diffraction gratings may be made extremely weak.