SBIR Phase I: VCSELA Wireless Technology

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will be to develop a higher power light source for wireless infrastructure links of high power and high speed. Typically, these links depend on mechanical alignment, presenting challenges such as a large form factor, increased use of power, and slow response. The proposed project will use non-mechanical methods to steer a beam. This development of these light sources will enable optical wireless links that are both easier to align and more stable, thus representing an important and inexpensive source for future high-speed links. This Phase I project advances a novel compound semiconductor laser array integrated with a high-speed electrical waveguide and integrated micro-optical lenses on the back side of the chip to sum beams into an overlap intensity profile. This low coherent source can be designed to increase power out without a penalty in frequency response. The proposed project enables non-mechanical beam steering using an array of array; the device will direct the beam using a routing technique with passive optical offsets. Efforts will be to understand and design optical intensity profiles in the far field and develop the capability to non-mechanically switch or sequence the arrays to move the data beam, to auto-align the beam's fine tuning. Optical modeling of the micro-optical lens arrays on the opposite side of a back-emitter laser array structure will enable understanding the light intensity and bit error rate uniformity fields at the collector. The design process will optimize overlap areas in the near field where uniform intensity is critical for projecting into the far field for collector stability. These devices could yield high-speed LiFi emitters ideal for wireless links, either for long distance or point-to-multipoint connections. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.