Abstract: A method of forming an electro-optical modulator including forming a lithium-niobate (LN) wafer including an optical waveguide situated within and proximate a first side of the LN wafer; bonding the LN wafer to a substrate such that the first side of the LN wafer faces the substrate; thinning the LN wafer; and forming coplanar transmission lines over and/or on a second side of the LN wafer, wherein the coplanar transmission lines extend parallel with and are laterally on either side of the optical waveguide.

Abstract: Relay-aided intelligent reconfigurable surfaces (IRSs) are provided. A novel relay-aided intelligent surface architecture is described herein that has the potential of achieving the promising gains of IRSs with a much smaller number of elements, opening the door for realizing these surfaces in practice. A half-duplex or full-duplex relay is connected to one or more IRSs. This merges the gains of relays and reconfigurable surfaces and splits the required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain between them. This architecture can hen significantly reduce the required number of reconfigurable elements in the IRS(s) while achieving the same spectral efficiencies. Consequently, the proposed relay-aided intelligent surface architecture needs far less channel estimation/beam training overhead and provides enhanced robustness compared to traditional IRS solutions.

Abstract: A compact optical device, such as an optical transmitter or transceiver, including a folded configuration, where an optical signal generated by a laser source propagates in a first direction, then is redirected in an orthogonal direction, and then redirected again to propagate in a second direction opposite the first direction. In accordance with the folded configuration, the optical signal from the laser source is coupled to a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) modulator that includes a thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) waveguide coupled to a radio frequency (RF) transmission line to produce an RF signal modulated optical signal for remote transmission.