Performance Analysis of Silicon Optical Phased Array with Nonuniform Antenna

Optical phased array (OPA) on silicon platform is developed as a hot topic in the past decade. In order to achieve both large field of view (FOV) and high side mode suppression ratio (SMSR), large-scale antenna with spacing of half wavelength is usually required, resulting in large footprint and complex scanning design. Recently, OPAs with nonuniform antenna are proposed as efficient solutions to achieve large FOV with simplified layout. Here, we analyze the performance of various OPAs with different nonuniform antenna designs. In addition, a genetic algorithm optimization method is further proposed for nonuniform antenna design. OPA with the proposed nonuniform antenna is simulated with a steering range of ±50° and SMSR of 11.3dB.