Optical Beam Switching Using an Integrated Meta-Surface Device

An integrated optical beam steering device consisting of a reflective metasurface and five switchable nano-antennas is proposed to operate at the standard telecommunication wavelength of 1550 nm. In the proposed device, the power is entered into a plasmonic hybrid waveguide line and directed to the feeding antennas, where placed in the focal points of the lens. To achieve a good angular accuracy (4°) and the low variation of light intensity (1dB) at the observation angle of 100°, a new analytical method is proposed in which the position of the feeding antennas are optimized to achieve a minimum phase variation on the metasurface. The proposed integrated system can be used for many applications such as inter and intra-chip optical interconnects, optical wireless communication, and low-cost integrated LIDAR systems.