Genetic algorithm based, on-chip, fishbone grating waveguide and transition design for time-domain operation

The limited bandwidth of conventional phase-shifter-based antenna arrays, which is caused by steering in different angles at different frequencies named as the beam-squint effect, is a problem that should be taken into consideration for the ultrawide band systems. To overcome this problem, designing optical true time delay (TTD) lines for the antenna arrays is crucial for the development of next-generation, wideband communication, and imaging systems, which employ short pulses for wideband operation. One of the important problems for employing such short pulses is the dispersion during the propagation along the on-chip optical waveguides, which cause the distortion in the pulse shape and decrease in the amplitude of the pulse. Therefore, we propose a one-dimensional (1D) fishbone grating waveguide with a "Lego" type of step taper on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate, both of which are designed for time-domain operation. The designed grating waveguide/taper pair is excited by a pulsed Gaussian light source, having a FWHM of 90 fs at a center wavelength of 1550 nm, where we investigate the possibility of controlling the dispersion by using SiO2 cladding modulation and taper structure optimization using genetic algorithm. The simulation results show that it is possible to decrease the dispersion in terms of the amplitude of the pulse up to 85%. The simulation results also show that the coupling efficiency from the taper to the waveguide can be increased up to 73%, which also decrease the dispersion of the pulse significantly. The simulated bandwidth of the grating waveguide/taper pair is found to be 56 nm, which allows ultrawide band operation.