Thermal Control Design for a Space-Borne On-Chip Optical Phased Array

The thermal control and model-based analysis is an integral part of developing an optical photonics device such as the proposed Optical Phased Array (OPA). This research is to model and implement the thermal control hardware and algorithm to keep the OPA at a stable temperature during operation. Detailed COMSOL models of the OPA and supporting hardware demonstrated that a constant setpoint results in consistent and proportional low levels of thermal crosstalk. A thermal feedback controller and supporting hardware was designed and tested to improve the overshoot and settling time. The system for the OPA includes both a solid state thermo-electric cooler (TEC), and the custom PCB interface between them. The controller was tuned experimentally and simulation analysis. The results indicate that a combination of the heuristic Zeigler-Nichols classic method and simulated input dependent experimental transfer function method yields the fastest settling times at 18.5 and 27.5 seconds.