Parallel 4D Solid‐State LiDAR Enabled by an Integrated Si‐SiN Focal Plane Switch Array Chip

ABSTRACT Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) plays a critical role in autonomous driving, robotics, and 3D environmental sensing. However, existing LiDAR systems that rely on mechanical beam steering are limited in size, weight, and stability, while conventional optical phased array based solid‐state LiDAR suffers from high insertion loss and limited frame rate imposed by serial beam steering. To address these issues, we present a solid‐state LiDAR system based on a Si‐SiN focal plane switch array (FPSA) chip that, for the first time, enables parallel 4D imaging by simultaneously activating a complete row of transceiver units. The chip monolithically integrates a 1 × 64 thermo‐optic switching network and an 8 × 8 transceiver antenna array with Ge/Si balanced photodetectors (BPDs), realizing on‐chip integration of beam emission, steering, and coherent detection. The LiDAR system achieves a ranging precision of 44.45 µm at meter‐level distances. In addition, a maximum detectable distance of 100.82 m is demonstrated for Lambertian targets with 10% reflectivity. The high ranging precision and long‐distance detection capability of the proposed system position the FPSA architecture to meet the diverse performance requirements of next‐generation solid‐state LiDAR across a broad range of applications.