Guoke Optoelectronics: Committed to mass-producible, low-cost, all-solid-state automotive phased array lidar chips

The commissioning ceremony of the first phase of Xin Yihua project of Haining (China) Pan-Semiconductor Industrial Park, hosted by Haining Municipal People's Government and co-organized by Haining Economic Development Zone, was held in the form of an online live broadcast at Haining (China) Pan-Semiconductor Industrial Park. The five major projects completed and put into production this time involved intelligent equipment, key components, new energy and other fields with a total investment of 5.03 billion yuan. The annual output value is expected to reach 10.12 billion yuan after reaching full production.

As one of the co-organizers and participants of this event, Guoke Optoelectronics (Haining) Technology Co., Ltd. is a key enterprise introduced by the pan-semiconductor industry of Haining Economic Development Zone, Zhejiang Province. The company was established on the basis of integrating the former Zhongke Tianxin Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. and Xiamen Heyihua Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., and has R&D, production and sales organizations in Haining, Beijing, Xiamen, Shenzhen and other places. Guoke Optoelectronics is committed to providing customers with cost-effective lidar products and solutions based on core silicon-based photonic chip technology for a variety of application scenarios from consumer electronics to autonomous driving.

The company's team originated from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. With more than 20 years of research in the field of silicon photonics, it has accumulated a wealth of technical experience and top talents. It is one of the earliest teams in China to engage in research in related fields. Since 2017, the company has carried out industry-university-research cooperation with many top domestic and foreign R&D institutions through joint laboratories and other forms, and launched the first generation of optical phased array technology solid-state laser radar chip A2 in February 2018. On this basis, the company's R&D team continued to optimize and improve, and completed the tape-out of the new generation of optical phased array technology solid-state laser radar chip in August 2019, and organized third-party experts to review the results of this tape-out, and unanimously recognized that this tape-out has reached the domestic leading and internationally advanced level.

In order to meet the needs of vehicle-mounted phased array lidar application and mass production, Goke Optoelectronics has built a new silicon-based material system after two years of development, and cooperated with world-leading technology companies on tape-out and IP. It has solved several international technical problems such as insufficient optical power and sidelobe interference in previous vehicle-mounted phased array lidars, and completed a phased array lidar scanning chip that can be mass-produced (the chip and the packaged samples are shown in Figures 1 and 2), clearing the key technical barriers for the application of truly vehicle-mounted phased array lidars.

Figure 1: Phased array lidar chip sample

Figure 2: Phased array lidar chip packaging module

In terms of technology, Guoke Optoelectronics pioneered the use of a new silicon-based material system waveguide in the world and developed a customizable laser radar scanning chip from 780nm to 1650nm. With the advantages of new material technology such as low transmission loss and weak nonlinearity, this chip has comprehensive and significant advanced characteristics compared with traditional photonic material systems, thereby ensuring that a waveguide with a width of several hundred nanometers can carry more than watt-level continuous light or peak power kilowatt-level pulse laser energy, providing feasibility for the application of vehicle-mounted laser radar with a detection distance of hundreds of meters or even kilometers. At the same time, due to the adoption of a new material system, a coupling loss of less than 1dB and a transmission loss of about 0.1dB/cm are guaranteed. In addition, the use of original hardware design and software development of intelligent adaptive algorithms has achieved a sidelobe suppression ratio that is one order of magnitude lower than traditional phased array technology. After packaging, the chip can achieve laser beam scanning with a wide scanning angle, high collimation, and high contrast, and achieve an ideal combination with optical integrated coherent detection technology. The chip manufacturing process is compatible with CMOS process and has the feasibility of large-scale, low-cost industrialization. The cost can be less than US$30 when mass-produced.

Figure 3: Sidelobe suppression comparison between traditional phased array radar (left) and this chip (right)

In addition to lidar scanning chips, Goke Optoelectronics has also made significant progress in technologies such as frequency-modulated continuous-wave coherent detection and beam control, and plans to develop a low-cost all-solid-state lidar module based on phased array scanning chips within 2020.