Mode Reconfigurable Optical Phased Array Architecture Bridging Structured‐Light and FMCW Sensing

ABSTRACT Solid‐state depth sensing is critical for emerging applications requiring high accuracy, robustness, and large‐scale integration. However, single‐modality approaches suffer inherent performance trade‐offs, while implementing multi‐sensor fusion on unified platform remains challenging. Here, we present single‐chip optical phased array (OPA) based dual‐mode depth‐sensing module integrating structured light (SL) and frequency‐modulated continuous‐wave (FMCW) sensing. SL mode provides dense near‐field point clouds and “gaze‐style” navigation, whereas FMCW mode enables mid to long range coherent ranging. The proposed system extends the validated sensing rangefrom 0.15 to 50 m and, compared with single‐mode FMCW schemes, delivers 23× increase in point‐cloud density, 21% improvement in ranging accuracy, and 39.6% reduction in scanning resources. Laser source, OPA, and balanced photodetector are manufactured on a single wafer by silicon photonics platform, demonstrating strong integration potential. This work demonstrates first fully solid‐state, single‐chip OPA‐enabled dual‐mode depth‐sensing system, offering scalable route toward high‐performance integrated depth sensing.