An efficient compact blazed grating antenna for optical phased arrays

Phased arrays are vital in communication systems and have received significant interest in the field of optoelectronics and photonics, enabling a wide range of applications such as LiDAR, holography, and wireless communication. In this work, we present a blazed grating antenna that is optimized to have upward radiation efficiency as high as 80% with a compact footprint of 3.5 µm × 2 µm at an operational wavelength of 1.55 µm. Our numerical investigations demonstrate that this antenna in a 64×64 phased array configuration is capable of producing desired far-field radiation patterns. Additionally, our antenna possesses a low side lobe level of −9.7 dB and a negligible reflection efficiency of under 1%, making it an attractive candidate for integrated optical phased arrays.