MANAGING CONTROL OF OPTICAL PHASED ARRAYS WITH MULTIPLE OPTICAL SOURCE PORTS

Steering light includes: providing, from a plurality of optical source ports, a respective optical wave that is tuned over different respective wavelengths, within different respective time slots; emitting at least a portion of the light from at least one optical phased array comprising a plurality of optical phase shifters, and a plurality of optical grating antennas; distributing at least a portion of the light using at least one optical distribution network (ODN) comprising: one or more ODN input ports, and two or more ODN output ports each coupled to a different respective one of the optical phase shifters; and coupling at least a portion of the light using at least one optical coupler (OC) comprising: at least one OC input port coupled to one of the optical source ports, and at least one OC output port coupled to one of the one or more ODN input ports.