We present, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of coherent solid-state light detection and ranging (LIDAR) using optical phased arrays in a silicon photonics platform. An integrated transmitting and receiving frequency-modulated continuous-wave circuit was initially developed and tested to confirm on-chip ranging. Simultaneous distance and velocity measurements were performed using triangular frequency modulation. Transmitting and receiving optical phased arrays were added to the system for on-chip beam collimation, and solid-state beam steering and ranging measurements using this system are shown. A cascaded optical phase shifter architecture with multiple groups was used to simplify system control and allow for a compact packaged device. This system was fabricated within a 300 mm wafer CMOS-compatible platform and paves the way for disruptive low-cost and compact LIDAR on-chip technology.

In this Letter, we demonstrate an 8×8 apodized silicon photonic phased array where the emission from each of 64 nanoantennas was tailored to exhibit Gaussian-shaped intensity distributions in the near field so that the sidelobes of the generated far-field optical beam were suppressed compared to that of a uniform phased array. With the aid of the 72 thermo-optic phase tuners directly integrated within the phased array, we dynamically shaped the generated optical beam in the far field in a variety of ways.

We review recent advances in integrated large-scale optical phased arrays. The design and fabrication of large-scale optical phased arrays using silicon photonic circuits are discussed from device designs including the directional couplers, thermooptic phase shifters, and optical nanoantennas, to system studies including phased array synthesis and noise analysis. By taking advantage of the well-developed silicon complementary metal-oxidesemiconductor (CMOS) fabrication technology, several large-scale integrated silicon photonic phased arrays are demonstrated, including two passive-phased arrays (64 × 64 and 32 × 32) with the ability to generate complex holographic images, an 8 × 8 active phased array for dynamic optical beamforming, and an 8 × 8 active antenna array with amplitude apodization. These optical phased array demonstrations, with up to 12 000 integrated optical elements, represent the largest and densest silicon photonic circuits demonstrated to date.

We present several optical phased arrays enabled by state-of-the-art large-scale silicon photonic integration which could find potential applications in optical switching, optical communications, light detection and ranging, and holography.

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