Photonic-electronic integrated circuit-based coherent LiDAR engine

TL;DR

This paper presents a fully integrated, wafer-scale photonic-electronic coherent LiDAR engine that combines lasers, amplifiers, and electronics, enabling compact, high-performance laser ranging systems suitable for widespread deployment.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel, fully foundry-compatible wafer-scale integration of all LiDAR components, including lasers, amplifiers, and electronics, for the first time in a compact chip-scale system.

Findings

Achieved full wafer-scale integration of LiDAR components.

Demonstrated a turnkey, linearization-free laser source.

Enabled seamless integration with existing LiDAR architectures.

Abstract

Microelectronic integration is a key enabler for the ubiquitous deployment of devices in large volumes ranging from MEMS and imaging sensors to consumer electronics. Such integration has also been achieved in photonics, where compact optical transceivers for data centers employ co-integrated photonic and electronic components. Chip-scale integration is of particular interest to coherent laser ranging i.e. frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW LiDAR), a perception technology that benefits from instantaneous velocity and distance detection, eye-safe operation, long-range and immunity to interference. Full wafer-scale integration of this technology has been compounded by the stringent requirements on the lasers, requiring high optical coherence, low chirp nonlinearity and requiring optical amplifiers. Here, we overcome this challenge and demonstrate a photonic-electronic integrated circuit-based coherent LiDAR engine, that combined all functionalities using fully foundry-compatible wafer scale manufacturing. It is comprised of a micro-electronic based high voltage arbitrary waveform generator, a hybrid photonic circuit based tunable Vernier laser with piezoelectric actuators, and an erbium-doped waveguide optical amplifier - all realized in a wafer scale manufacturing compatible process that comprises III-V semiconductors, SiN silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits as well as 130nm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The source is a turnkey, linearization-free, and can serve as a 'drop-in' solution in any FMCW LiDAR, that can be seamlessly integrated with an existing focal plane and optical phased array LiDAR approaches, constituting a missing step towards a fully chip-scale integrated LiDAR system.