Single-Pixel Imaging Using Carrier-Depletion Optical Phased Array With Reduced Phase Shift Requirement

The optical-phased array (OPA) has gained special interest in recent years as a high-speed and compact imaging device. While large-scale OPAs have been demonstrated in single-pixel imaging, the complexity of the driver circuit is becoming a crucial problem as the number of phase shifters increases. Here, we investigate the phase shift requirement of OPA for single-pixel imaging and demonstrate, for the first time, that full 2π phase shifts are not mandatory to generate a set of illumination patterns with a sufficient degree of randomness required to reconstruct the image. Using a silicon photonic OPA chip with 128 carrier-depletion-based phase shifters, we experimentally confirm this property by successfully retrieving an image under a maximum phase shift of only ∼1.5π without affecting the quality of the image. Consequently, the input voltage can be reduced significantly. Since the carrier-depletion phase shifters generally require high driving voltages, this finding paves the way to high-speed OPA-based imaging with a minimum device requirement.