Integrated Microwave Photonics: A Chip Platform by Hybrid Integration of InP and SiN TriPleX

Integrated microwave photonics (iMWP) is a novel field in which the fast-paced progress in integrated optics is harnessed to provide breakthrough performances in well-established microwave photonic processing functions, which are traditionally realized using discrete optoelectronic components. A field where iMWP is expected to have a strong impact is the one of phased array antennas. Such arrays offer a number of attractive characteristics, including a conformal array profile, broadband beamforming (beam shaping and beam steering) and interference nulling. This, however, is very challenging to achieve using only electronics processing. For this reason, the last few years, an increasing amount of effort has been directed to the development of our hybrid chip platform where Si 3 N 4 -based-TriPleX and InP optical waveguides are combined to enable broadband and high frequency radio signal processing in the optical domain.