Abstract
A seven-bit optical true time delay unit with a delay tuning increment of 1.42 ps was designed and fabricated on silicon photonics platform, which can be utilized in Ka-band phased array antenna systems. The delay unit consists of eight thermo-optical switches and seven waveguide delay lines with different lengths. By manipulating the states of the thermo-optical switches, 128 stages of discrete time delays varying from 0 to 191.37 ps has been obtained with low average power consumption of 178.77 mW. Besides, the integrated delay unit was fabricated on the silicon-on-insulator chip that has a very compact footprint of 7.4 mm × 1.8 mm. In addition, as the waveguide delay dependence on the modulation frequency is very limited and can be neglected, the proposed delay unit should process a large bandwidth that allows it to be utilized in microwave applications with abundant bandwidth.
Highlights
Phased antenna array (PAA) technology was introduced to increasing the communication efficiency via transmitting the microwave signal within a specific direction
The transmittance was normalized to 0 dB and the insertion loss of a single optical switch is about 1.95 dB according to our experimental results
We have demonstrated a seven-bit optical true time delay (OTTD) unit designed for a 40 GHz PAA
Summary
Phased antenna array (PAA) technology was introduced to increasing the communication efficiency via transmitting the microwave signal within a specific direction. For the integrated OTTD, Vol 11, No 4, August 2019 Such as photonic crystal waveguides [13], waveguide Bragg gratings [14], [15], Blass matrix based on optical switches [16], microring resonators (MRR) [17]–[26] and switchable waveguide delay lines [27]–[30] have been demonstrated. Xie et al has reported a sevenbit waveguide delay line based on low loss silicon waveguide, a delay tuning increment of 10 ps was achieved and the maximum delay was larger than 1 ns [28] They have combined optical switchable waveguide and MRR to realize the continuous delay time tuning [29]. The proposed OTTD unit has a wide bandwidth owing to the wavelength independence of waveguide delay lines
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