Silicon Photonics for Microwave Photonics Applications

用于微波光子学应用的硅光子学

• 批准号: 250335-2013
• 负责人: Yao, Jianping
• 金额: $ 4.44万
• 依托单位: University of Ottawa
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=594444
• 关键词: Silicon; Photonics; Microwave; Applications

Microwave photonics is an area that studies the interaction between microwave and optical waves for the generation, processing, control and distribution of microwave signals by means of photonics,which can find numerous applications such as broadband wireless communications, radar, sensors, imaging, and modern instrumentation. The key motivation of using photonics for microwave applications is the large bandwidth and low loss offered by photonics, which makes the implementation of certain important functions possible while in the electrical domain the same functions may not be realizable or the systems become extremely complicated and costly. Different microwave photonics systems have been proposed and demonstrated in the past few years. However, these systems were implemented mainly based on discrete photonic and microwave components, which make the systems bulky, heavy and costly with relatively poorer performance. On the other hand, there is an increasing interest in the last few years in integrating photonic devices on silicon chips, an area called silicon photonics. Compared to conventional photonic devices based on III-V semiconductors, silicon photonics is a technique that allows optical devices to be made economically using standard and well-developed semiconductor fabrication techniques. Significant breakthroughs have been made in the last few years in implementing both passive and active optical devices on a silicon substrate, such as optical waveguides, optical filters, add-drop multiplexers, modulators, and photodetectors. However, very few demonstrations have been reported to implement microwave photonics devices and systems based on silicon photonics. The motivation of the proposed research is to use the well-established silicon integration technologies to fabricate microwave photonic devices and systems on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate, to demonstrate different microwave photonics functionalities with significantly improved system performance.

微波光子学是研究微波与光波之间相互作用的领域，通过光子学手段产生、处理、控制和分配微波信号，可在宽带无线通信、雷达、传感器、成像和现代仪器仪表等领域得到广泛应用。将光子学用于微波应用的关键动机是光子学提供的大带宽和低损耗，这使得某些重要功能的实现成为可能，而在电气领域中，相同的功能可能无法实现，或者系统变得极其复杂和昂贵。在过去几年中，已经提出并演示了不同的微波光子系统。然而，这些系统主要基于分立的光子和微波元件来实现，这使得系统体积庞大、笨重且成本高昂，而且性能相对较差。另一方面，过去几年人们对在硅芯片上集成光子器件越来越感兴趣，这一领域称为硅光子学。与基于 III-V 族半导体的传统光子器件相比，硅光子学是一种允许使用标准且成熟的半导体制造技术经济地制造光学器件的技术。过去几年，在硅基板上实现无源和有源光学器件方面取得了重大突破，例如光波导、光学滤波器、分插复用器、调制器和光电探测器。然而，关于实现基于硅光子学的微波光子器件和系统的演示却很少。本研究的动机是利用成熟的硅集成技术在绝缘体上硅（SOI）衬底上制造微波光子器件和系统，以展示不同的微波光子功能并显着提高系统性能。