Integrated On-Chip Bragg Time-Delay System for Thermo-Optical Control of a Microwave Antenna

This theoretical modeling-and-simulation paper presents designs and projected performance of ~1550-nm silicon-on-insulator beamsteering of a microwave phased array antenna by the use of true time delays. The tunable on-chip optical delay line is a cascade connection of waveguide Bragg grating resonators (WBGRs) separated by a piece of straight waveguide. The notch in the reflectivity spectrum is translated along the wavelength axis by means of a low-power TO heater stripe atop the grating, inducing a time delay that depends upon the line position of the WBGR affected by TO switching. The filter resonator is a new in-guide array of identical Bragg structures, each one comprising N closely coupled phase-shifted Bragg-grating resonators. The length of each grating cavity in an N group is chosen according to the Butterworth filter technique to provide one resonant spectral profile with 40 GHz optical bandwidth. Finally, we examined the performances of the beamformer system operating in the X and Ku bands, respectively. The investigation demonstrated that steering angles up to 48° are feasible by assuming a minimum steering angle of 8° and a minimum WBGR spacing of about 354 and 236 μ m for X and Ku bands, respectively.