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, wireless communication, etc. 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 {\mu}m \times 2 {\mu}m at an operational wavelength of 1.55 {\mu}m. Our numerical investigations demonstrate that this antenna in a 64 \times 64 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.