Designing high power lasers for on-chip solid state FMCW LiDAR

Abstract

Currently, in systems using photonic integrated circuits (PIC), not many integrated options for lasers on-chip are available. So generally, off-chip devices (pig-tailed lasers, etc) or underperforming on-chip devices are used. From both price and performance point of view, this is an undesirable situation. Especially, for automotive-grade solid-state FMCW LiDAR systems, the elephant in the room is generally ignored; the optical output power generated by the laser is too low, and/or the mode-hop free tuning is too little and too slow. In this presentation, we will show designs and expected results that offer a customized laser suitable for FMCW LiDAR, with powers only limited by nonlinear effects in the PIC platform, wavelength tuning ranges of over 100 nm and Lorentzian linewidths appropriate to that of a distance measurement of 300 m (source to target). Our current hybrid integration solution is targeted at c-band, but the approach is valid for all wavelengths for which the PIC platform is transparent.