Integrated Optical Phased Arrays for on-Chip Communication

The realization of efficient interconnections is one of the important challenges either in long-haul optical communications or in short-reach optical interconnects. As an example, in chip multiprocessors, the efficient interconnection of cores is becoming a major challenge and it is necessary to avoid communication bottleneck and to meet high bandwidth, low-power and low-latency requirements. Wireless optical on-chip communication is a promising technology to overcome these communication issues at the chip level. In this context, here we propose a new approach based on the use of optical wireless switches based on thin-film lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) technology. In particular, the radiation characteristics of reconfigurable optical phased arrays are investigated for the realization of integrated optical switches for wireless on-chip interconnection.