Scalable Optical Phased Arrays, SOPA

Exciting Technology is the world leader in scalable Optical Phased Arrays, OPAs, that can be made operational size in the relatively near term. Space fed optical phased arrays allow us to steer one dimension at a time. This requires many orders of magnitude less connections than chip scale, or transmit/receive module, based OPAs that others are developing, for example >300,000 times fewer connects for a 50 cm aperture, thousands of connections instead of hundreds of billions. Furthermore, we can make the required number of elements even lower by combining our space fed OPA technology with our patent pending decentered lens technology, and by using what we call an EZOPA approach. Our OPAs can provide rapid, precision beam steering for a variety of space applications, AND can also allow dynamic, non-mechanical, lens fabrication. If we have the ability to add a low-resolution adaptive optics element, there is no loss in generality by steering one dimension at a time, but steering one dimension at a time makes our OPAs much easier to scale to operational sizes. This phase 1 SBIR will allow NASA to design OPAs that replace slow, bulky, mechanical steering with compact OPAs that can be quickly scaled to operational size, from landing lidars to orbital remote sensing lidar. In phase 1 we will fabricate a 1 cm EZOPA with ±15 deg steering. We will demonstrate beam steering with the EZOPA and we will design an OPA based aperture to replace the 3 apertures on the Navigation Doppler Lidar, NDL. We will also design approaches to scale to 50 cm OPA based apertures, using only a 5 cm diameter OPA. Overall, non-mechanical steering is essential for increased lidar performance, a significant reduction in C-SWaP, and for reducing risk of mechanical component failure in a space environment. In phase 2 we will build a space application prototype with a path to space ruggedization and further scalability.