Highly directional waveguide grating antenna for optical phased array

Abstract

A highly directional waveguide grating antenna by patterning top cladding has been proposed. Spatial separation of the grating structure from the waveguide reduces the strength of perturbation to achieve a millimeter-scale emission. The optimized grating structure offers above 70% directionality with 800 nm waveguide width. The vertical field-of-view of 15 degrees is achieved with 100 nm wavelength bandwidth. Thanks to the its simple structure and large critical dimension, the proposed structure is suitable for manufacturing in CMOS foundries with DUV lithography.