# Thinned Linear Optical Phased Array Design Through a Pareto-Optimal Synthesis Strategy

## TL;DR

This paper presents a new method for designing thinned optical phased arrays by optimizing antenna placement to reduce elements while maintaining performance.

## Contribution

A novel Pareto-optimal synthesis strategy is introduced for optimizing thinned optical phased array designs.

## Key findings

- The proposed method minimizes antenna elements while maintaining low sidelobe levels and narrow beam widths.
- Realistic WGA modeling demonstrates the effectiveness of the optimization strategy in practical scenarios.

## Abstract

The design of a thinned linear optical phased array (OPA) comprising a collection of waveguide grating antennas (WGAs) is addressed in this work. Given a fully populated linear OPA with antennas located in a uniform grid, the problem of selecting which elements have to be removed or retained is formulated as an optimization one. To this end, the definition of the optimal thinning architecture is produced through a multi-objective optimization strategy with the goal of minimizing the number of required antenna elements while maintaining a low sidelobe level and narrow beam width. A set of representative results is presented, also considering realistic WGA modeling to assess the capabilities and the potentialities of the proposed approach.