Feasibility study of integrated tunable laser with intracavity linear phase modulator for FMCW LiDAR

A tunable laser source operating in the C-Band for frequency modulated continuous wave operation is studied. The laser cavity is based on cascaded Mach-Zehnder interferometers for wavelength filtering and a highly linear intra-cavity phase modulator. The integrated laser is based on InP generic photonic integration, and the complete laser structure was studied by means of circuit simulations using building block models that incorporate experimental data. A frequency chirp range of 8GHz with a linearity correlation coefficient as high as 99.98% is obtained. By using the generated signal, a detection range resolution of 1m is achieved at a 30-meter distance, whereas a 18cm resolution is expected for an ideal linear intra-cavity phase modulator.