US Patent 11934048 Photonic integrated circuit-based coherently phased array laser transmitter

An apparatus includes a photonic integrated circuit, which includes at least one splitter configured to split at least one input beam into multiple input beamlets and multiple phase modulators configured to phase-shift at least some of the input beamlets. The apparatus also includes an array of optical amplifiers configured to amplify the phase-shifted input beamlets and generate amplified beamlets. The apparatus further incudes a beam combiner configured to combine the amplified beamlets and generate an output beam. In addition, the apparatus includes a controller configured to control the phase modulators in order to adjust phasing of the phase-shifted input beamlets.