CN215813605U - Optical phased array - Google Patents
Optical phased array Download PDFInfo
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- CN215813605U CN215813605U CN202121675823.6U CN202121675823U CN215813605U CN 215813605 U CN215813605 U CN 215813605U CN 202121675823 U CN202121675823 U CN 202121675823U CN 215813605 U CN215813605 U CN 215813605U
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Abstract
The application provides an optical phased array, the quantity through setting up the transmitting antenna on per two transmitting antenna's a straight line is less than 4 for be less than 4 in the whole array in the antenna quantity on same straight line, thereby can let all transmitting antennas participate in the interference result on all directions as much as possible, can obtain better grating lobe suppression effect under less transmitting antenna quantity.
Description
Technical Field
The application relates to the technical field of phased arrays, in particular to an optical phased array.
Background
The phased array technology is a beam scanning technology without a mechanical structure, is applied to a microwave band at the earliest time, and is also applied to an optical band along with the improvement of related technologies of the optical band, so that an optical phased array is formed. The optical phased array inherits the advantage that the microwave phased array does not need a mechanical structure, so that the optical phased array can be free from the influence of mechanical inertia to realize high-speed and flexible beam scanning, and because the wavelength of light waves is shorter, optical phased array devices are smaller and can be integrated on a very small chip, and the power consumption is reduced, so that the optical phased array can be applied to laser radars and is expected to be applied to high and new technical fields such as free space optical communication, laser projection, optical storage and the like. In addition, with the continuous update of consumer-grade electronic products, functions on intelligent equipment are more and more, and functional modules needing light beam scanning are gradually appeared, for example, face recognition and augmented reality functions all need certain two-dimensional depth information, scanning and ranging are important technical means for obtaining the two-dimensional depth information, so that the optical phased array technology with solid-state scanning characteristics can also be applied to intelligent equipment such as mobile phones, bracelets, glasses and the like.
An ideal point wave source forms a spherical wave in space and propagates outwards, the amplitude in each direction is the same, after two wave sources are superposed, the amplitude in partial directions is strengthened, for convenience of explaining the position where the wave beam generates constructive interference, the position of the wave peak is represented by a line on a two-dimensional plane, as shown in fig. 1, the position where the lines intersect represents that the wave peak and the wave peak are overlapped, the phase is the same, and the constructive interference occurs. It is clear that the position at which the lines intersect is related to two factors, the phase of the wave source, and the position of the wave source.
When the phased array technology is applied to an optical wavelength band, the wavelength of electromagnetic waves of the optical wavelength band is very small, and a transmitting antenna unit with the size smaller than a half wavelength cannot be manufactured by means of the current processing technology, so that the distance between adjacent antennas is usually far larger than the half wavelength, theoretically, when the distance between the antennas is larger than the half wavelength, a plurality of light beams can exist in different directions at the same time, the larger the distance between the antennas is, the smaller the distance between two adjacent light beams is, and an intensity distribution similar to a grid is formed, as shown in fig. 2, and therefore the light beams are called as grid lobes. When the device is used for detection, different light beams cannot be distinguished by one detector, and the different light beams can interfere with each other, so that a reliable detection result cannot be obtained. These grating lobes must be eliminated by some means, and in the conventional method, one method is to remove the grating lobes by means of external shielding, but at the same time, the scanning range of the light beam is limited, and a part of the light power is wasted; another method is to arrange the antennas non-uniformly to weaken the grating lobes, but can weaken the grating lobes to be small only under the condition of a very large number of antennas, and as the number of antennas increases, the antenna processing becomes difficult, and the power consumption and the control complexity of the optical phased-array device also increase sharply. Due to the problem that the grating lobe is difficult to achieve a good eliminating effect, the performance of the optical phased array is greatly limited at present, and the optical phased array is temporarily difficult to be widely applied.
Therefore, the traditional optical phased array is difficult to achieve a good grating lobe weakening effect on the premise of controlling the number of the transmitting antennas to be small.
SUMMERY OF THE UTILITY MODEL
Based on this, it is necessary to provide an optical phased array for solving the problems that the conventional optical phased array generates a large number of grating lobes and it is difficult to achieve a better effect of attenuating the grating lobes on the premise of controlling the number of transmitting antennas to be small.
The present application provides an optical phased array comprising:
a light source for projecting a light beam;
the beam splitter is provided with a beam splitter input end and a plurality of beam splitter output ends, the beam splitter input end is arranged at the emergent position of the light source and is used for equally dividing the light beam projected by the light source into a plurality of sub-light beams, and each sub-light beam is output through one beam splitter output end;
each phase shifter is connected with the output end of one beam splitter and used for adjusting the phase of the sub-beams;
the number of the transmitting antennas is equal to that of the phase shifters, and each phase shifter is connected with one transmitting antenna and used for transmitting the sub-beams after the phases are adjusted;
the number of transmit antennas on a straight line passing through every two transmit antennas is less than 4.
Further, the number of transmit antennas is less than 500.
Further, the optical phased array further includes:
and the processor is connected with each phase shifter and is used for sending a voltage control signal to each phase shifter so as to control each phase shifter to adjust the phase of the sub-beams.
Further, the plurality of transmitting antennas are uniformly arranged on the circumference of a circle.
Further, the phase adjusted by the phase shifter is in a range of more than 0 degrees and less than 360 degrees.
Furthermore, the transmitting directions of all the transmitting antennas form preset angle values with the plane where the circumference is located, and the transmitting directions of all the transmitting antennas are kept consistent.
Further, the preset angle value is within an angle range greater than 0 degree and less than or equal to 90 degrees.
Further, the plurality of transmitting antennas are uniformly arranged on one of a single spiral line, a double spiral line, an ellipse and an S-shaped line.
Furthermore, the plurality of transmitting antennas form a plurality of transmitting antenna arrays, and the plurality of transmitting antenna arrays are uniformly distributed on the circumference of a circle.
The light source is the laser of wavelength for 1550 nanometers, the quantity of transmission antenna is 63, the radius of circumference is 100 microns.
The application provides an optical phased array, the quantity through setting up the transmitting antenna on per two transmitting antenna's a straight line is less than 4 for be less than 4 in the whole array in the antenna quantity on same straight line, thereby can let all transmitting antennas participate in the interference result on all directions as much as possible, can obtain better grating lobe suppression effect under less transmitting antenna quantity.
Drawings
FIG. 1 is an interference diagram of interference of three wave sources.
Fig. 2 is an interference diagram of a conventional optical phased array.
Fig. 3 is a schematic structural diagram of an optical phased array according to an embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 4 is a schematic structural diagram of an optical phased array according to another embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 5 is a schematic diagram of a transmitting antenna arrangement of a conventional uniformly spaced optical phased array, a conventional non-uniformly spaced optical phased array, and an optical phased array in a circumferential antenna arrangement form according to an embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 6 is a schematic diagram of a transmitting antenna arrangement of an optical phased array in a single helical antenna arrangement according to an embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 7 is a schematic diagram of a transmitting antenna arrangement of an optical phased array in a double helix antenna arrangement according to an embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 8 is a schematic diagram of a transmit antenna arrangement of an optical phased array in an elliptical antenna arrangement according to an embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 9 is a schematic diagram of a transmitting antenna arrangement of an optical phased array in an S-shaped linear antenna arrangement according to an embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 10 is a schematic diagram of an arrangement of transmitting antennas of an optical phased array in a circumferential array arrangement according to an embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 11 is a far field intensity profile of an optical phased array of uniformly spaced lattice antennas and a grating lobe intensity profile taken at y-0 according to an embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 12 is a far field intensity profile of an optical phased array of a non-uniformly spaced lattice antenna and a grating lobe intensity profile taken at y-0 according to an embodiment of the present application.
Fig. 13 is a far-field intensity distribution diagram of an optical phased array of a circular antenna arrangement and a grating lobe intensity distribution curve taken at y-0 according to an embodiment of the present application.
Reference numerals:
100-a light source; 200-a beam splitter; 210-splitter input; 220-splitter output;
300-a phase shifter; 400-a transmitting antenna; 500-processor
Detailed Description
In order to make the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the present application more apparent, the present application is described in further detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and embodiments. It should be understood that the specific embodiments described herein are merely illustrative of the present application and are not intended to limit the present application.
The present application provides an optical phased array.
As shown in fig. 3, in an embodiment of the present application, the optical phased array includes a light source 100, a beam splitter 200, a plurality of phase shifters 300, and a plurality of transmitting antennas 400. The light source 100 is used to project a light beam. The beam splitter 200 has a beam splitter input 210 and a plurality of beam splitter outputs 220. The beam splitter input end 210 is disposed at an emitting position of the light source 100. The beam splitter input 210 is used to equally divide the light beam projected by the light source 100 into a plurality of sub-beams. Each sub-beam is output through a beam splitter output 220. Each phase shifter 300 is connected to one of the splitter outputs 220. The phase shifter 300 is used to adjust the phase of the sub-beams. The number of the transmission antennas 400 is equal to the number of the phase shifters 300. Each phase shifter 300 is connected to one transmitting antenna 400. The phase shifter 300 is used to emit the phase-adjusted sub-beams. The number of the transmission antennas 400 on one straight line passing through every two transmission antennas 400 is less than 4.
Specifically, the light source 100 may be a laser. The light source 100 may be one of a semiconductor laser, a fiber laser, and a solid laser, and the wavelength of the laser is not limited.
The beam splitter 200 may be a structure formed by fiber fused tapering, or a structure etched on a chip and having a light splitting function. It is not particularly limited in which way the beam splitting function is implemented.
In this embodiment, the number of the transmitting antennas 400 passing through one straight line of every two transmitting antennas 400 is set to be less than 4, so that the number of the antennas on the same straight line in the whole array is less than 4, all the transmitting antennas 400 can participate in interference results in various directions as much as possible, and a better grating lobe suppression effect can be obtained with a smaller number of the transmitting antennas 400.
In an embodiment of the present application, the number of the transmitting antennas 400 is less than 500.
Specifically, at present, as the number of transmitting antennas increases, the processing of the transmitting antennas becomes more difficult, and the power consumption and control complexity of the optical phased array device also sharply increase. Therefore, the number of the transmitting antennas 400 can be controlled to be less than 500 in the embodiment, so that the cost and the manufacturing difficulty can be greatly saved, and a better grating lobe suppression effect can be achieved under the condition that the number of the transmitting antennas 400 is small.
Of course, this is not intended to represent that the present application must only be applicable in scenarios where the number of transmit antennas 400 is less than 500. After the future transmission antenna processing technology is developed and advanced, the number of the transmission antennas 400 in the present application may not be limited, and the larger the number of the transmission antennas 400 is, the better the suppression effect of the grating lobe of the optical phased array applied with the present application is.
As shown in fig. 4, in an embodiment of the present application, the optical phased array further includes a processor 500. The processor 500 is connected to each phase shifter 300. The processor 500 is configured to send a voltage control signal to each phase shifter 300 to control each phase shifter 300 to adjust the phase of the sub-beams.
Specifically, although there is only one, the processor 500 sends the voltage control signal to each phase shifter 300 differently, and the different phase shifters 300 can be controlled to adjust the phases of different phase values respectively.
In an embodiment of the present application, the plurality of transmitting antennas 400 are uniformly arranged on the circumference of a circle.
Specifically, the uniform arrangement is that the pitch of every two adjacent transmitting antennas 400 is fixed. The plurality of transmitting antennas 400 are arranged at equal intervals on the circumference of a circle.
On the one hand, the transmitting antennas 400 are uniformly arranged on the circumference, so that the number of the transmitting antennas 400 on a straight line passing through every two transmitting antennas 400 is less than 4, because a straight line passes through the circumference, only two points are generated. That is, the number of antennas on the same straight line in the whole array is two, so that the circular arrangement can obtain better grating lobe suppression effect with less antennas. On the other hand, forming a circle does not require a large number of transmit antennas 400, and therefore a much smaller number of antennas than conventional 2D array arrangements can be used to achieve the same or better far field beam quality. In addition, the circle is a very regular and perfect graph, which facilitates phase control.
In an embodiment of the present application, the phase shifter 300 adjusts the phase in a range greater than 0 degrees and less than 360 degrees.
In an embodiment of the present application, the transmitting directions of all the transmitting antennas 400 form a predetermined angle value with the plane where the circumference is located, and the transmitting directions of all the transmitting antennas 400 are consistent.
Specifically, in order to interfere in free space, the transmission directions of all the transmitting antennas 400 cannot be limited to the plane of the circumference, and thus the transmitting antennas 400 must be allowed to transmit the plane of the circumference. Therefore, the transmitting directions of all the transmitting antennas 400 form a predetermined angle value with the plane where the circumference is located.
In an embodiment of the present application, the predetermined angle value is within an angle range greater than 0 degree and less than or equal to 90 degrees.
Specifically, when the preset angle value is 90 degrees, the transmission directions of all the transmitting antennas 400 are perpendicular to the plane on which the circumference is located. The preset angle value is not suggested to be too small, and the optimum angle range is between 30 degrees and 90 degrees.
As shown in fig. 6, 7, 8 and 9, in an embodiment of the present application, the plurality of transmitting antennas 400 are uniformly arranged on one of a spiral line, a double spiral line, an ellipse, and an S-shaped line.
Specifically, fig. 6 to 9 are schematic diagrams of the transmission antenna arrangement of the optical phased array in the form of one spiral line, one double spiral line, one ellipse, and one S-shaped line antenna arrangement, respectively. Of course, the arrangement shape of the transmitting antennas may be other shapes as long as the number of the transmitting antennas 400 on one straight line passing through every two transmitting antennas 400 is less than 4. Fig. 6 to 9, where the naked eye appears to have more than 4 transmitting antennas 400 in a straight line due to a display error caused by a small scale of the drawing, the embodiments of fig. 6 to 9 still satisfy the condition that the number of transmitting antennas 400 in a straight line of every two transmitting antennas 400 is less than 4.
As shown in fig. 10, in an embodiment of the present application, the plurality of transmitting antennas 400 form a plurality of transmitting antenna 400 arrays, and the plurality of transmitting antenna 400 arrays are uniformly arranged on the circumference of a circle.
Specifically, as shown in fig. 10, the arrangement of the plurality of transmitting antennas 400 in each array is not limited, and only the arrangement of the plurality of transmitting antennas 400 among each other is limited to be the circumference of a circle.
In an embodiment of the present application, the light source 100 is a laser with a wavelength of 1550 nm. The number of the transmitting antennas 400 is 63. The radius of the circumference is 100 microns.
Specifically, in the present embodiment, the 1550nm light source 100 is adopted, and 63 transmitting antennas 400 are uniformly arranged on a circumference with a radius of 100 μm, so that the grating lobe can be weakened by more than 80%. Of course, the wavelength of the light source, the number of the transmitting antennas 400 and the radius of the circumference may be any values according to practical requirements, and are reasonably selected according to practical application scenarios, and the embodiment is a common embodiment in the near-infrared silicon photonic phased array.
The detection data results of the respective antenna arrangement modes and the respective grating lobe weakening conditions of the optical phased array of the conventional uniformly-spaced lattice antenna, the optical phased array of the non-uniformly-spaced lattice antenna and the optical phased array of the circumferential antenna arrangement provided by the application are respectively shown below.
As shown in fig. 11, the conventional uniform-interval lattice arrangement is that a plurality of transmitting antennas are arranged to form an 8 × 8 uniform-interval lattice. At this time, the far-field light intensity distribution diagram of the optical phased array on the spherical surface of 1m is shown in fig. 11a, and the numerical simulation result can also be seen from fig. 11a, so that it can be clearly seen that very many grating lobes appear. Fig. 11b takes the intensity curve in the plane where y is 0, the horizontal axis is the corresponding azimuth angle, the vertical axis is the normalized intensity, and a grating lobe appears almost every 10 degrees.
As shown in fig. 12, the conventional non-uniform spacing lattice arrangement is that a plurality of transmitting antennas are arranged to form an 8 × 8 non-uniform spacing lattice. The far field intensity distribution of the optical phased array on the spherical surface of 1m far is shown in fig. 12a, and the numerical simulation result can be seen from fig. 12 a. Fig. 12b shows the intensity curve in the plane where y is 0, the horizontal axis is the corresponding azimuth angle, the vertical axis is the normalized intensity, and it can be seen that the grating lobes are weakened by 3.89dB, which is converted to a percentage reduction of about 60%.
As shown in fig. 13, the circumferential antenna arrangement provided by the present application is arranged such that a plurality of transmitting antennas are arranged to form the circumference of a circle. The far field intensity distribution of the optical phased array on the spherical surface of 1m far is shown in fig. 13a, and the numerical simulation result can be seen from fig. 13 a. Fig. 13b shows the intensity curve in the plane where y is 0, the horizontal axis is the corresponding azimuth angle, and the vertical axis is the normalized intensity, and it can be seen that the grating lobes are reduced by 7.93dB, which is converted to a percentage reduction of about 80%.
From the above results, it can be seen that the grating lobe intensity of the phased array of the circular antenna arrangement is about half of that of the phased array of the square lattice arrangement under the condition of the similar number of antennas. Similarly, when the grating lobe intensities are similar, the number of antennas required by the circularly arranged phased array is much smaller than that of the phased array arranged by the square lattice, for example, if the phased array arranged by the square lattice needs to achieve about 80% of grating lobe weakening effect, an 18 × 18 square array is required, the total number of antennas is 324, and the circumferential antenna arrangement mode only needs 63 antennas. The number of transmitting antennas is reduced, the difficulty of chip integration of the optical phased array is reduced, an optical phased array device with higher performance can be manufactured under a certain process level, the cost is reduced, and the development and the application of the optical phased array technology are facilitated.
The technical features of the embodiments described above may be arbitrarily combined, the order of execution of the method steps is not limited, and for simplicity of description, all possible combinations of the technical features in the embodiments are not described, however, as long as there is no contradiction between the combinations of the technical features, the combinations of the technical features should be considered as the scope of the present description.
The above-mentioned embodiments only express several embodiments of the present application, and the description thereof is more specific and detailed, but not construed as limiting the scope of the present application. It should be noted that, for a person skilled in the art, several variations and modifications can be made without departing from the concept of the present application, which falls within the scope of protection of the present application. Therefore, the protection scope of the present application shall be subject to the appended claims.
Claims (10)
1. An optical phased array, comprising:
a light source for projecting a light beam;
the beam splitter is provided with a beam splitter input end and a plurality of beam splitter output ends, the beam splitter input end is arranged at the emergent position of the light source and is used for equally dividing the light beam projected by the light source into a plurality of sub-light beams, and each sub-light beam is output through one beam splitter output end;
each phase shifter is connected with the output end of one beam splitter and used for adjusting the phase of the sub-beams;
the number of the transmitting antennas is equal to that of the phase shifters, and each phase shifter is connected with one transmitting antenna and used for transmitting the sub-beams after the phases are adjusted;
the number of transmit antennas on a straight line passing through every two transmit antennas is less than 4.
2. The optical phased array as claimed in claim 1, wherein the number of transmit antennas is less than 500.
3. The optical phased array as claimed in claim 2, further comprising:
and the processor is connected with each phase shifter and is used for sending a voltage control signal to each phase shifter so as to control each phase shifter to adjust the phase of the sub-beams.
4. The optical phased array as claimed in claim 3, wherein said plurality of transmit antennas are uniformly arranged around the circumference of a circle.
5. The optical phased array as claimed in claim 4, wherein the phase adjusted by the phase shifter is in a range of greater than 0 degrees and less than 360 degrees.
6. The optical phased array as claimed in claim 5, wherein the transmission directions of all the transmitting antennas are at predetermined angular values with respect to the plane of the circumference, and the transmission directions of all the transmitting antennas are consistent.
7. The optical phased array of claim 6, wherein the predetermined angular value is within an angular range greater than 0 degrees and equal to or less than 90 degrees.
8. The optical phased array as claimed in claim 3, wherein said plurality of transmit antennas are uniformly arranged on one of a single helix, a double helix, an ellipse, and an S-shaped line.
9. The optical phased array as claimed in claim 3, wherein said plurality of transmit antennas comprise a plurality of transmit antenna arrays, said plurality of transmit antenna arrays being uniformly arranged around the circumference of a circle.
10. The optical phased array as claimed in claim 4, wherein said light source is a laser having a wavelength of 1550nm, said number of transmitting antennas is 63, and said circumference has a radius of 100 μm.
Priority Applications (1)
| Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| CN202121675823.6U CN215813605U (en) | 2021-07-22 | 2021-07-22 | Optical phased array |
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| Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
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| CN202121675823.6U CN215813605U (en) | 2021-07-22 | 2021-07-22 | Optical phased array |
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| CN215813605U true CN215813605U (en) | 2022-02-11 |
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| CN202121675823.6U Active CN215813605U (en) | 2021-07-22 | 2021-07-22 | Optical phased array |
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