Solid-state Lidar with wide steering angle using counter-propagating beams

Abstract

Abstract In a solid-state photonics-based Lidar, all essential components can be integrated into a silicon chip. It is simple and effective to use a tunable laser source to implement Lidar’s beam steering. However, how to effectively increase the steering angle in a small wavelength tuning range is usually a key challenge due to the limited material and waveguide dispersion. In Silicon-on-insulator waveguide, we design a novel solid-state Lidar using two trans-electrical (TE) polarized beams counter-propagating towards each other. Two corresponding output beams from just a single grating coupler (GC) can be seamlessly combined to double the beam steering angle. Furthermore, a low-priced solid-state Lidar is designed for TE polarized beams counter-propagating towards each other by using wavelength division multiplexed laser array.