Monolithic silicon-on-insulator optical beam steering with phase locking heterodyne feedback

Abstract

Free space optical transmission suffers from the line of sight requirement and object induced shadowing. We investigate free-space optical beam steering by means of an optical phased array (OPA) in order to increase signal strength in the desired direction and allow greater mobility. To overcome beam squint and jitter, a novel heterodyne feedback is introduced as a method to stabilize the output beam. This may alleviate the effects of shadowing and enable optical space division multiple access and tracking.