Development of a Coherent-Detection LiDAR System based on Hybrid SOI-InP Integration

A LiDAR system is developed on a hybrid photonic integrated circuit (PIC) to measure distance of a target exploiting coherent detection. The key advancement is the heterogeneous integration of a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) fabricated in Indium Phosphide (InP) technology into a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) PIC using microtransfer printing, with the aim of enhancing performance and compactness with respect to bulk implementation. The system undergoes comprehensive laboratory testing in free-space and back-to-back configurations, evaluating the accuracy of the distance measurements. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed heterogeneous integration approach.