In this paper, a new design approach of optical phased array (OPA) with low side lobe level (SLL) and wide angle steering range is proposed. This approach consists of two steps. Firstly, a nonuniform antenna array is designed by optimizing the antenna spacing distribution with particle swarm optimization (PSO). Secondly, on the basis of the optimized antenna spacing distribution, PSO is further used to optimize the phase distribution of the optical antennas when the beam steers for realizing lower SLL. Based on the approach we mentioned, we design a nonuniform OPA which has 1024 optical antennas to achieve the steering range of ±60°. When the beam steering angle is 0°, 20°, 30°, 45° and 60°, the SLL obtained by optimizing phase distribution is −21.35, −18.79, −17.91, −18.46 and −18.51 dB, respectively. This kind of OPA with low SLL and wide angle steering range has broad application prospects in laser communication and lidar system.
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