An efficient compact blazed grating antenna for optical phased arrays

Abstract Phased arrays are vital in communication systems and have received significant interest in the field of optoelectronics and photonics, enabling a wide range of applications such as LiDAR, holography, and wireless communication. In this work, we present a blazed grating antenna that is optimized to have upward radiation efficiency as high as 80% with a compact footprint of 3.5 µ m × 2 µ m at an operational wavelength of 1.55 µ m. Our numerical investigations demonstrate that this antenna in a <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>64</mml:mn> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:mn>64</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> phased array configuration is capable of producing desired far-field radiation patterns. Additionally, our antenna possesses a low side lobe level of −9.7 dB and a negligible reflection efficiency of under 1%, making it an attractive candidate for integrated optical phased arrays.