IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 24, NO.

6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 8300707

Design Considerations of Silicon Nitride

Optical Phased Array for Visible
Light Communications
Shahryar Sabouri , Student Member, IEEE, and Kambiz Jamshidi, Member, IEEE

Abstract—Design considerations and guidelines for utilizing an

array of silicon nitride grating couplers for point-to-point commu-
nication with the ability of two-dimensional (2-D) beam steering
are investigated using numerical simulations. A single grating cou-
pler is designed to enable efficient and directional radiation. The
spacing of couplers in the array is optimized in order to decrease
the level of the cross-talk (<−65 dB) as well as reducing the num-
ber of unwanted side lobes. The number of elements in an array
is examined for both 1-D and 2-D designs in order to achieve effi-
cient radiation. Moreover, a phased array of 50 elements, with an
aperture area of 40 µm × 75 µm, is proposed taking into account
the tradeoff between the footprint and radiation efficiency. The ra-
diation pattern of the designed array is investigated with full-wave
simulation and compared to theoretical expectations. Beam steer-
ing in azimuth angle, using thermo-optical phase shifters is studied.
Beam steering in polar angle is studied by exploiting wavelength
tuning. The loss of the free space link regarding the designed array
in different distances is obtained to study the range of the optical
wireless communication link.
Index Terms—Antenna arrays, beam steering, optical Fig. 1. 1-D phased array antenna arrangement. d represents the center-to-
communication. center distances between neighboring grating couplers.

I. INTRODUCTION of optical phased arrays resemble those of microwave arrays,

PTICAL wireless (OW) communication system is a
O new technique proposed recently to transmit information
through free space. In general, OW systems are identical to RF
wireless ones, with the advantage of being able to provide links
with channel rates up to 10 Gb/s [1], [2]. The primary purpose
of optical antenna and LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging)
is to investigate a counterpart of RF antenna and RADAR but
in visible, IR, and near IR. Though the approach is still at a
developing stage, the increase of interest in it has resulted in
a new field of research known as optical phased arrays (OPA).
The OPAs must be able to not only radiate directionally but also
steer the beam rapidly in a wide angle. The operating principles
Manuscript received January 31, 2018; revised April 1, 2018; accepted May
7, 2018. Date of publication May 18, 2018; date of current version June 5, 2018.
This work was supported by the German Research Foundation in the context of
the “Enhancing Nonlinear Kerr effect in Silicon Nitride Waveguides” project.
(Corresponding author: Shahryar Sabouri.)
The authors are with the Integrated Photonic Devices Group, Faculty of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Dresden, Dres-
den 01069, Germany (e-mail:, shahryar.sabouri@tu-dresden.de; k.jamshidi@
ieee.org).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSTQE.2018.2836991
1077-260X © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
which tune the phase between array elements to change beam
direction. An OPA system is fed by a laser source as an input
and the optical signal will then be divided into several branches
ending with emitters (grating couplers or end-fire waveguides).
For each branch and behind the grating coupler, a phase shifter
is embedded to tune the phase (see Fig. 1). Three types of phase
shifters that have been reported earlier are using thermo-optic,
electro-optic, and optomechanical technologies [3]. The feasi-
bility of OPAs, especially for silicon-based designed models,
has recently been studied [4]–[7]. Nevertheless, we believe sili-
con nitride (SiN) is a suitable candidate to be used in the visible
range due to their transparency in the range. This preference is
also justified by the fact that in principle, SiN waveguides can be
realized with two orders of magnitude fewer losses (∼1 dB/m)
in comparison to silicon waveguides (1 to 2 dB/cm) [8].
Grating couplers are utilized to function as in-/out- coupling
elements for the interface between the optical fiber and photonic
integrated circuits. These couplers are expected to be widely
employed for point-to-point communications, projection and
imaging systems, because of their ability to convert waveguide
mode into radiation mode, or vice versa [9]. In order to obtain
higher and more directed upward radiations, some optimization
methods such as an asymmetric grating and multilayer substrate

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8300707 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 24, NO. 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
Fig. 2. Schematic view of a grating coupler and its radiated beam direction.
Azimuth angle is depicted with ψ and θ refers to polar angle.
reflectors have been studied [10], [11]. Not all these methods,
however, can be realized in a CMOS compatible fabrication
process.
In this paper, we study the feasibility of using a 1D array of
silicon nitride grating couplers on SOI platform for point-to-
point communications in the visible range. The rest of the paper
is organized as follows. Section II explains the design process
of a single grating coupler, as an antenna, which enables obtain-
ing high upward radiation. The theoretical challenges, such as
cross-talk and unwanted side lobes, of spacing elements in the
array along with the effect of the number of elements in both
1-D and 2-D array structures are subjects of discussion in Sec-
tion III. For the proposed array model in chapter 4, thermo-optic
phase shifters are utilized for beam steering in azimuth angle
and the radiation pattern of OPA is compared with theoretical
expectations. In Section V, the capability of beam steering, in
polar angle, using wavelength tuning has been studied for a
specific array of grating couplers. Section VI concluded with
presenting the received power from proposed OPA for different
ranges of links. Different parameters of the designed structure,
such as realized gain, beam width, beam efficiency and side lobe
level as well as communication range and transmitted power are
studied numerically within the article.
II. GRATING COUPLER OPTIMIZATION
A single grating coupler is designed using a 300 nm thick
waveguide layer by partially etching the waveguide by 150 nm.
In order to achieve efficient outcoupling, the filling factor of
the grating coupler is chosen as 50% [11]. Full-wave finite
difference time domain (FDTD) method in 3D is employed
to numerically simulate the structures. Using a well-known
equation (1), grating period (Λ) of 300 nm is obtained, which re-
sults in the radiation of a single beam in the first order of diffrac-
tion into the air. As shown in Fig. 2, the waveguide has a 2 μm
silicon dioxide Bottom-cladding to reduced leakage into the
substrate [13].
λ0
Λ= for n = 0, ±1, ±2, . . .
nef f − nt sinθn
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Fig. 3. Realized gain and full width half maximum of the main beam of far
field radiation versus length of a silicon nitride grating coupler.
TABLE I
RADIATION CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MAIN BEAM FOR SINGLE AND
50-ELEMENT ARRAY GRATING COUPLERS
where nef f and nt are the effective refractive index of guided
wave and the refractive index of top layer (here is air), respec-
tively. λ0 is the free-space wavelength and θn is the angle for
the nth order of diffraction of the grating.
Out of plane radiation of the guided beam profile in a grating
coupler decays exponentially. Decay length (Ld ) is the parame-
ter that explains such behavior in [13]:
 
2
P (x) = P0 exp − .x (2)
Ld
where P0 is the total power of the initial guided light. Most
often, a grating coupler with a relatively short length is not able
to radiate all guided wave into space; therefore, its length has
been studied. By increasing the length of the grating coupler,
the radiation pattern has been numerically studied. The gain and
FWHM (in θ) are the varying parameters for different lengths,
which are presented in Fig. 3. As the figure shows the number
of periods will be increased until the radiation pattern of grating
coupler reaches its saturated point. In a length of 130 periods, the
far field pattern of the grating coupler meets its highest realized
gain (26.49 dB) and narrowest full width half maximum beam
width (1.5°), as shown in Table I. Increasing the length after this
saturated point has no observable effect on neither the gain nor
the beam width. Finally, a length of about 40 μm is considered
for the single grating coupler. The length of 10 μm (40 periods),
(1)
however, is taken into account for 2-D array study in the next
SABOURI AND JAMSHIDI: DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS OF SILICON NITRIDE OPTICAL PHASED ARRAY
Fig. 4. Cross-coupling between two waveguides for lengths of 10 μm and
50 μm. Distance between waveguides are considered 300 nm and 500 nm.
Dashed plots refer to the waveguides with 1 μm top oxide cladding.
section. Fig. 3 represents the behavior of FWHM and realized
gain to the length of the grating coupler. The results of the
simulation for the gain is similar to the exponential trend of the
power in (2).
III. ARRAY DESIGN
The radiation pattern of an antenna array is the product of
each element pattern multiplied by the array factor. Normalized
array factor is a periodic function in X with a period of 2π.
  
1  sin N X2 
|AF (X)| =     (3a)
Γ  sin X2 
X even larger than the effect of neighboring waveguide [15]. This
= 1/2 (kdcos ψ + β)
2 effect, however, is not considered in this study.
where N is the number of elements and k is the wave vector. ψ
is the initial angle between the main beam and Y axis, which is
zero here (see Fig. 2). d and β are the center-to-center distance
and phase difference between elements, respectively. Since X is
not a real angle, it can go larger than 2π or less than 0. In these
cases |AF(X)| shows unwanted ‘grating lobe(s)’ [14].
A. Spacing and Cross-Coupling
In order to design a uniform spaced array, the center-to-
center distance between elements (see Fig. 1) must be less
than half of the free space wavelength. This is the condition
that guarantees a radiation pattern with only a main beam and
no appearance of any side lobes. However, the limitation of
d < λ/2 is not easily applicable to an OPA. Firstly, because of
the mode confinement, the waveguide has some restrictions in
the dimension of its width. Moreover, by decreasing the distance
between the waveguides, the cross-coupling effect increases.
To reach a promising mode confinement, the widths of both
waveguides and grating couplers are 1 μm. The cross-coupling
between two waveguides is studied numerically. Fig. 4 shows
the effect of waveguide spacing (pitch) and cladding material
on the cross-coupling. The coupling is studied for two lengths
(Lc = 10 μm and Lc = 50 μm). By increasing the pitch from
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8300707
Fig. 5. Far field pattern of single grating coupler and its 50-element array
model in ψ angle. Positions of unwanted grating lobes are represented in the
pattern.
Fig. 6. Top-view of the 2D array structure. Element spacing in x and y axes
are 15 μm and 1.5 μm, respectively.
300 nm to 500 nm, the coupling decreases from −40 dB to
−65 dB in the wavelength of 660 nm. As presented in Fig. 4,
applying silicon dioxide as top cladding (dashed graphs), re-
duces the core-clad contrast resulting in higher cross-coupling.
In an array of waveguides, especially in sub-wavelength spacing,
the effect of second-, third-, or nth-nearest waveguides could be
(3b)
The number of side lobes and their distances from the main
beam play a vital role in the field of view (FOV) of the designing
transceivers. Consequently, in order to reduce the number of
side lobes on one hand (based on (3)), and to suppress the cross-
coupling effect (Fig. 4) on the other hand, we considered an
array of 50 grating couplers with a center-to-center spacing of
around 2.3 λ (pitch = 500 nm and cross-coupling <−60 dB). As
shown in Fig. 5, this element spacing results in only two higher
order side lobes in the far field pattern of the designed array.
Theoretically, the position of these side lobes can be derived
from (3b). When Ψ/2 is ±mπ, we can write:
 
λ
ψm ax = cos−1 (−β ± 2mπ) (4)
2πd
ψm ax defines the location of the secondary and higher order side
lobes. Based on (4) and array spacing of d = 2.3 λ, the position
of the side lobes must be on ±28.36° and ±63.89° which are
close to the simulation results shown in Fig. 5. However, (4) is
written for ideal dipole antenna and the mutual coupling effect
is not considered in the formula.
Comparing the results for single- and array-design in Table I,
one can see the increase of the gain up to 42.7 dB on one hand,
and the decrease in beam width from 1.5° to 0.4° on the other
8300707 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 24, NO. 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

Fig. 7. Radiation properties of 1D-array of grating couplers with the length of 40 periods (a) and 135 periods (b). Radiation properties of 2D-array of grating
couplers with 15 elements (c) and 50 elements (d). L is the length of each grating coupler. N and M referring the number of elements in the directions of x and y.

hand. It should be noted however that the increase in the value
of side lobe level is caused by the above mentioned unwanted
secondary lobes. As the array modification stays along the
Y-axis, the radiation characteristic in θ remained unchanged
(see Table I).
B. 2D Array Consideration
Thus far, the length of single element and spacing between
them have been studied regarding an optimized 1D array. Here,
as shown in Fig. 6 we have considered both 1D- and 2D-array
of grating couplers. The far field pattern has been observed
by varying the number of elements in both x- and y-axes. The
element-spacing in x- and y-axes are set to be 15 μm and 1.5 μm,
respectively. Fig. 7(a) and (b) refer to the 1D-array design of
two type of grating couplers: One has the optimized length
of 135 periods (for maximized radiation) and the other has a
length of 40 periods. By increasing the number of elements
in y-direction (M), the antenna gain can be increased and the
beam width in ψ angle can be narrowed. It can be observed
that the length of elements has no effect on the width of the
radiated beam along ψ angle, but on θ (see Fig. 7(a) and (b)).
For instance, if a beam with a circular spot (1.5° × 1.5°) is
expected, the appropriate design could be the intersection of the
red graph and dashed green graph in Fig. 7(b), where 15 grating
couplers with a length of 12 μm (L = 40 periods) are placed in a
1D-array structure. On contrary, changing the number of ele-
ments in x-direction has an effect on the beam size in the angle
of θ (see Fig. 7(c) and (d)). For example, a 1D-array of 50 el-
ements (A1×50 ) shows a beam spot size of 3° × 0.4°, while a
design of A6×50 shows a circular spot of 0.4° × 0.4°. As a result,
by adjusting N and L one can determine the size of the beam in
θ, and M is the parameter which can define the beam size in ψ.
In addition, increasing all of these parameters simultaneously
increases the distance range of the antenna. Ultimately, a bigger
radiating area (effective area) results in a higher gain for the
antenna.
IV. PHASE TUNING
Steering the main radiation beam of the array antenna along
ψ angle needs controlling the phase of each channel [16], [17].
One alternative is to use a thermo-optical phase shifter for this
purpose. As shown in Fig. 8, temperature tuning has been used
by applying voltage on a copper wire. In order to obtain the de-
sired resistivity, length of the wire is selected to be 300 μm and
its cross-section area as 300 × 500 nm2 . As shown in Fig. 8(a)
and (b), the wire is located parallel to the silicon nitride wave-

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SABOURI AND JAMSHIDI: DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS OF SILICON NITRIDE OPTICAL PHASED ARRAY
Fig. 8. Temperature distribution out of a biased copper wire placed on top of
the silicon nitride waveguide and buried in silicon dioxide. Simulations have
been done in CST MPHYSICS STUDIO (a). Side-view of the designed phase
shifters (b). Top-view of the phased array system representing the connection
between phase shifters and grating couplers (c).
guide and buried in silicon dioxide. Equation (5) represents the
phase change as a function of temperature [18]:
2πD dn
ΔΦ = ΔT (5)
λ0 dT
where D is the length of the device, λ0 is the free-space wave-
length (here 660 nm), ΔT is the change in the temperature of
the waveguide, dn/dT is thermo-optic coefficient assumed to be
(2.45 ± 0.09) × 10−5 for silicon nitride [19].
Table II represents the monitored temperature for different
distances from the wire after applying a voltage of 1 V on the
wire. To apply π phase shift along 300 μm-waveguide, a temper-
ature increase of about 44 K is required, which can be realized
by embedding the copper heater 1 μm above the waveguide and
a power consumption of Pπ = 30.9 mW (see Fig. 8(a)). Fig. 8(b)
represents the side-view of the designed phase shifters and their
connectivity to the DC electrodes. The copper wire needs to be
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8300707
TABLE II
TEMPERATURE AND PHASE CHANGE DUE TO DESIGNED COPPER HEATER WITH
0.3 MM LENGTH ABOVE THE WAVEGUIDE
Fig. 9. Far field pattern of 50-element array model in ψ angle by applying 0
to π phase shift on each element. The graph on top-left is the magnification of
the main beam steering.
sufficiently far from the waveguide in order to have no effect on
the guiding light. The chosen distances in this study guarantee
such a condition. As it is shown in Fig. 8(c), the spacing between
phase shifters are considered far enough to avoid heat transfer
to the neighboring heater. Based on the results of Table II, the
spacing of at least 20 μm needs to be considered between the
phase shifters. After phase shifters, the distance between the
waveguides should be narrowed down to the distances required
for beam steering as shown in Fig. 8(c).
Considering the propagating phase delay which is shown in
Fig. 8(c), different phase delays with the steps of π/6 are ap-
plied to the designed OPA and the response of the array pattern
to these different phase shifts is depicted in Fig. 9. Theoreti-
cally, by applying π-phase shift, a beam steering in the range
of ±12.7° can be achieved. However, as the main beam steers
wider, the more enhanced secondary beam is observed, as shown
in Fig. 9. The enhanced secondary beam, which is also closer to
the main beam, results in a narrower field of view (FOV), which
must be considered in the design of transceivers for different
applications.
V. WAVELENGTH TUNING
For vertical beam steering along polar (θ) angle (see Fig. 10)
one alternative would be to design a 2-D array of grating
couplers similar to studies in [3]–[5]. This method, however,
cannot offer a wide-angle beam steering possibility, due to the
8300707 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 24, NO. 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
Fig. 10. Radiation pattern for θ angle in the plane ψ = 0 for array of 50
grating couplers in different wavelengths. Peak of main beam direction in θ is
presented for each pattern.
TABLE III
RADIATION PROPERTIES OF 50-ELEMENT ARRAY ANTENNA FOR DIFFERENT
WAVELENGTHS
parallelogram lattice structure of the array [3]. Subsequently,
we attempt to find another alternative which benefits from grat-
ing coupler intrinsic attitude. Based on (1), diffraction angles of
a grating coupler are highly wavelength dependent. Therefore,
wavelength tuning can also be used. For a single grating cou-
pler, varying the wavelength varies the orientation of its radiated
beam. Fig. 10 represents far-field patterns, in polar angle, of the
earlier designed 50-elements array for different wavelengths of
in-coupled light. One can see directionality variation of the main
beam around 30° for 120 nm wavelength range. However, this
range of wavelength tuning may not be applicable to all con-
ventional lasers as a source. Thus, the beam steering of 15.6°
is still reachable for 60 nm wavelength tuning. Although beam
steering in terms of the main beam’s direction is satisfying, the
radiation characteristic is not the same for all wavelengths. A
comparison of radiation parameters for different wavelengths is
shown in Table III. The concentrated power of the main beam to
the whole radiated power is reported as beam efficiency, which
has its lowest value for 630 nm-wavelength (17%) and highest
one for 600 nm (59%). Positive side-lobe level for the wave-
length of 600 nm indicates more leakage into the substrate than
upward radiation directed in the main beam. The variation of
wavelength affects the beam width but not so as to produce a
considerable change.
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TABLE IV
RECEIVED POWER AND GEOMETRIC LOSS OF THE FREE SPACE LINK FOR
DIFFERENT DISTANCES
VI. FREE SPACE LINK
To study the feasibility of the proposed OPA for a short-range
communication, the losses in a free space link must be consid-
ered. Since for the targeting wavelength (660 nm) absorption
and scattering losses are around 0.01 dB/km [20], atmospheric
attenuation does not have a significant effect on links in the
range of meters. Therefore, distance and beam divergence must
be taken into account. The gain of an antenna depends on the ef-
fective total radiating aperture and not on the element’s structure
or spacing. In a wireless system where the alignment between
transmitter and receiver is perfectly set, the geometric loss can
be written as:
 
DR
LG = −20log (6)
DT + Rθdiv
where DR and DT are the diameters of receiver and trans-
mitter, respectively. θdiv is the divergence angle of the Gaus-
sian beam [20], which, here is FWHM of the main beam (see
Table I). Table IV presents the losses of the free space link for
different distances by considering the proposed OPA as both
transmitter and receiver. Considering 15 dBm (32 mW) as the
input power, the received power from the proposed transmitter
(50-elements array) is reported.
VII. CONCLUSION
The design guidelines and constraints of a 1-D array of silicon
nitride grating couplers have been studied in order to be used
for point-to-point optical wireless communications. The length
of a single grating coupler is optimized to reach its saturated
radiation point. Element spacing of the phased array is optimized
with respect to the cross-talk effect and unwanted radiation
side lobes. The cross-coupling of −65 dB in 50 μm length is
obtained. A spacing of 2.3 λ is used for the array design which
results in only two side lobes, positioned on ±26.2° and ±61.6°,
in the radiation pattern of the array. The effect of the number of
elements in 1-D and 2-D arrays is studied to obtain the shape
and size of the beam. For beam steering in azimuthal angle,
a thermo-optic phase shifter is studied to apply up to π phase
shift on each channel of the array by a power consumption of
Pπ = 30.9 mW which would result in ±12.7° beam steering in
Azimuth angle. Beam steering of around 15.6° in polar angle is
obtained using wavelength tuning in a range of 60 nm. The link
budget and loss of the free space link is calculated for various
distances to find the range which can be used for optical wireless
communications.
SABOURI AND JAMSHIDI: DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS OF SILICON NITRIDE OPTICAL PHASED ARRAY
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank R. Hosseini and M. Namdari for their
scientific support during this research and also S. Waladan and
M. Afkhami who helped with proofreading this paper.
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Shahryar Sabouri (S’16) received the B.S. degree
in electrical-telecommunication engineering from
Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran, in 2012,
and the M.S. degree in organic and molecular elec-
tronics from the Technical University of Dresden,
Dresden, Germany, in 2017. He is currently a Re-
search Assistant with the Integrated Photonic De-
vices Group, Faculty of Electrical and Computer En-
gineering, Technical University Dresden, Dresden,
Germany.
Kambiz Jamshidi (M’03) received the Ph.D. de-
gree in electrical engineering from the Sharif Uni-
versity of Technology (SUT), Tehran, Iran, in 2006.
He was with the advanced communication research
institute (ACRI), SUT, as a Researcher from 2006
to 2009. From 2009 to 2012, he was a Senior Re-
searcher with the High-Frequency Technology (HFT)
Institute, Deutsche Telekom University of Applied
Sciences, Leipzig, Germany. He was with the HFT
and Photonics Lab of the Technical University of
Berlin (TU Berlin) from 2012 to 2013. Since 2013,
he has worked as an Assistant Professor with the Integrated Photonic De-
vices,Communications Lab, Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Dresden University of Technology. Dr. Jamshidi is a Senior Member of Optical
Society of America.