Low-complexity photonic transceiver
AssigneeHEPT Lab, Inc.
InventorsAroutin Khachaturian, Austin Fikes, Babak Bahari, Seyed Ali Hajimiri
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A low-complexity photonic transceiver includes a low-complexity control for controlling the components of the low-complexity transceiver, a coherent source for generating electromagnetic radiation, an on-chip photonic wavefront processing block or processor for modulating the electromagnetic radiation, as well as a photonic transceiver array for transmitting and receiving electromagnetic radiation. Feedback is provided to the coherent source and/or on-chip photonic wavefront processing block/processor for both analog and digital calibration, using a sample of the output from the on-chip photonic wavefront processing block/processor.
Claims25
A transceiver chip, comprising:
- an integrated circuit comprising:
- an input for receiving coherent electromagnetic radiation outputted from a coherent source of electromagnetic radiation;
- at least one aperture for at least one of transmission of transmitted electromagnetic radiation or reception of received electromagnetic radiation;
- a wavefront processor comprising an array of nodes operable, in response to activation by a plurality of drivers and a plurality of control switches, for at least one of:
- modulating the coherent electromagnetic radiation, when received from the coherent source, to form a waveform of the transmitted electromagnetic radiation transmitted by the aperture;
- or
- determining a phase and an amplitude of a received waveform from received signals generated by the aperture in response to received electromagnetic radiation received on the aperture;
- or
- configuring the aperture as at least one of a transmitter aperture for transmitting the transmitted electromagnetic radiation or a receiver aperture for receiving the electromagnetic radiation;
- and
- wherein:
- a sum of a number of drivers and a number of the switches is less than a number of the nodes, or
- the switches 203 comprise control switches each controlling a splitter tree connected to a plurality of the nodes and a sum of the number of drivers and a number of the control switches is less than the number of the nodes.
A method of operating a transceiver, comprising:
- controlling a plurality of nodes using a plurality of drivers and a plurality of control switches for at least one of:
- controlling a waveform of electromagnetic radiation for at least one of beam forming or beam steering of transmitted electromagnetic radiation transmitted from the transceiver, or
- determining a phase and an amplitude of a received waveform of received electromagnetic radiation received on the transceiver, or
- configuring an aperture of the transceiver as at least one of a transmitter aperture for transmitting the transmitted electromagnetic radiation or a receiver aperture for receiving the received electromagnetic radiation;
- and wherein:
- a sum of a number of drivers and a number of the switches is less than a number of the nodes, or
- the switches comprise control switches each controlling a splitter tree connected to a plurality of the nodes, and a sum of the number of drivers and a number of the control switches is less than the number of the nodes.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.