SBIR Phase I: Integrated Millimeter-Wave Electronic Photonic System on a CHIP (EPSOC)

SBIR 第一阶段：芯片上集成毫米波电子光子系统 (EPSOC)

• 批准号: 1315369
• 负责人: Keith Shubert
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: DGNSS Solutions, LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-07-01 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1315369&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Integrated; Millimeter; Wave

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop an Electronic-Photonic System on Chip (EPSOC) for millimeter wave imaging. Millimeter-wave (mmW) imaging is an enabling technology for imaging and detection in degraded visual environments. However, the energy emitted in the mmW spectrum is approximately eight orders of magnitude lower than the energy emitted in the infrared spectrum. Consequently, passive mmW imaging is only viable with mmW receivers with very high sensitivity and inter-channel stability. Our proposed approach overcomes the limitations of traditional mmW receivers by using photonic technologies to up-convert the mmW radiation to optical frequencies, enabling a dramatic increase in sensitivity. The proposed system is integrated on a 3D hybrid electronic-photonic chip and maintains the phase information from the received mmW signals, thereby eliminating the need to integrate mechanical scanners, which reduces the overall system size and weight. Furthermore, our EPSOC leverages advances in the scaling of silicon technologies to provide high performance (fT and fmax frequency up to 300 and 400 GHz), integration density, and favorable economies of scale. Consequently, the proposed EPSOC is compact (2mmx2mm) and provides 5X better performance (0.1K-0.2K temperature sensitivity at a 33Hz rate) compared to existing mmW imagers on the market today.The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is the development of a low-cost Silicon Electronic Photonic Network on Chip (EPSOC) for millimeter wave imaging. Traditional mmW imagers are based on high gain III-V amplifiers that are noisy and difficult to integrate densely into focal plane array systems. These systems do not maintain phase information, which necessitates the use of scanners, making them bulky and slow with high power requirements. In contrast, our hybrid silicon electronic-photonic approach ensures dense integration, and uses photonic phase shifters, which will eliminate the need to integrate mechanical scanners. The EPSOC will have an impact on a broad range of application areas that require mmW sensitivity including astronomy, aerial reconnaissance, stand-off threat detection, portal screening, persistent surveillance, situational awareness, and video imaging navigation in the absence of GPS signals. Furthermore, it will be particularly useful for applications that require high resolution imaging through smoke, fog, sandstorms, clouds and dielectric materials including plastic and clothing. Lastly, this project will demonstrate the feasibility of 3D electronic-photonic systems on chip with high sensitivity, stability and integration density. This would have applications to other areas as well, such as, RF communications and signal processing.

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目将开发一种用于毫米波成像的电子-光子系统芯片(EPSOC)。毫米波成像是一种在退化的视觉环境中进行成像和检测的使能技术。然而，毫米波光谱中发射的能量大约比红外光谱中发射的能量低八个数量级。因此，被动毫米波成像仅适用于具有非常高灵敏度和通道间稳定性的毫米波接收器。我们提出的方法克服了传统毫米波接收器的局限性，使用光子技术将毫米波辐射上转换为光学频率，从而显著提高了灵敏度。该系统集成在3D混合电子-光子芯片上，并保持接收到的毫米波信号的相位信息，从而消除了集成机械扫描仪的需要，从而减小了系统的整体尺寸和重量。此外，我们的EPSOC利用硅技术扩展方面的进步，提供高性能(高达300 GHz和400 GHz的FT和FMAX频率)、集成密度和良好的规模经济。因此，与目前市场上现有的毫米波成像器相比，建议的EPSOC结构紧凑(2 mm×2 mm)，并提供5倍的性能(0.1K-0.2K温度灵敏度，33赫兹频率下)。该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发用于毫米波成像的低成本硅电子光子网络(EPSOC)。传统的毫米波成像仪是基于高增益III-V放大器的，这些放大器噪声大，难以密集集成到焦平面阵列系统中。这些系统不维护相位信息，这就需要使用扫描仪，这使得它们体积庞大、速度慢，并且对功率的要求很高。相比之下，我们的混合硅电子-光子方法确保了高密度集成，并使用了光子移相器，这将消除集成机械扫描仪的需要。EPSOC将对需要毫米波灵敏度的广泛应用领域产生影响，包括天文、空中侦察、隔离威胁检测、门户筛选、持续监视、态势感知和在没有GPS信号的情况下进行视频成像导航。此外，对于需要通过烟雾、雾、沙尘暴、云层和包括塑料和衣服在内的介电材料进行高分辨率成像的应用，它将特别有用。最后，本项目将论证高灵敏度、高稳定性和高集成密度的3D电子-光子系统在片上实现的可行性。这也将应用于其他领域，如射频通信和信号处理。