Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are considered as the way to make photonic systems or subsystems cheap and ubiquitous. PICs still are several orders of magnitude more expensive than their microelectronic counterparts, which has restricted their application to a few niche markets.
In this paper, we present the first fully packaged semiconductor laser optical phase-locked loop (OPLL) microwave photonic transmitter. The transmitter is based on semiconductor lasers that are directly phase locked without the use of any other phase noise-reduction mechanisms. In this transmitter, the lasers have a free-running summed linewidth of 6 MHz and the OPLL has a feedback bandwidth of 70 MHz. A state-of-the-art performance is obtained, with a total phase-error variance of 0.05 rad 2 (1-GHz bandwidth) and a carrier phase-error variance of 72 2 210 04 rad 2 in a 15-MHz bandwidth. Carriers are generated in the range of 7-14 GHz. The OPLL transmitter has been fully packaged for practical use in field trials. This is the first time this type of transmitter has been fabricated in a packaged state which is a significant advance on the route to practical application.
Recently, the desired very high throughput of 5G wireless networks drives millimeter-wave (mm-wave) communication into practical applications. A phased array technique is required to increase the effective antenna aperture at mm-wave frequency. Integrated solutions of beamforming/beam steering are extremely attractive for practical implementations. After a discussion on the basic principles of radio beam steering, we review and explore the recent advanced integration techniques of silicon-based electronic integrated circuits (EICs), photonic integrated circuits (PICs), and antenna-on-chip (AoC). For EIC, the latest advanced designs of on-chip true time delay (TTD) are explored. Even with such advances, the fundamental loss of a silicon-based EIC still exists, which can be solved by advanced PIC solutions with ultra-broad bandwidth and low loss. Advanced PIC designs for mm-wave beam steering are then reviewed with emphasis on an optical TTD. Different from the mature silicon-based EIC, the photonic integration technology for PIC is still under development. In this paper, we review and explore the potential photonic integration platforms and discuss how a monolithic integration based on photonic membranes fits the photonic mm-wave beam steering application, especially for the ease of EIC and PIC integration on a single chip. To combine EIC, for its accurate and mature fabrication techniques, with PIC, for its ultra-broad bandwidth and low loss, a hierarchical mm-wave beam steering chip with large-array Manuscript delays realized in PIC and sub-array delays realized in EIC can be a future-proof solution. Moreover, the antenna units can be further integrated on such a chip using AoC techniques. Among the mentioned techniques, the integration trends on device and system levels are discussed extensively.Index Terms-5G, millimeter-wave, beam steering, true-timedelay, phase shifter, antenna-on-chip, photonic radio beam steering, broadband beamforming, phase control units.
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Similarities and differences between photonic and microelectronic integration technology are discussed and a vision of the development of InP-based photonic integration in the coming decade is given
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