Light is found at the basis of bidirectional interfaces between digital systems and biological systems, including those in nano-bio-sensing and nano-bio-actuation applications. Despite the potentially very small size of optical transceivers and antennas, enabled by the very small wavelength of optical electromagnetic radiation, currently, existing systems commonly rely on macro-sized and intrusive equipment, including table-top microscopes and spectroscopy systems, and fiber optical technology as opposed to wireless setups. These place several bottlenecks between the possibilities and the capabilities of these emerging fields. In this paper, a unified theory is developed to design optical nano-antenna arrays, which are able to manipulate light similarly to how antenna arrays manipulate RF radiation. First, the applications of optical nano-antenna arrays in transmission, reception and reflection are described. Then, the fundamental factors affecting the design of individual optical antennas are described and modeled. The mutual coupling between optical nano-antenna is studied to guide the development of compact antenna arrays. Different beamforming strategies are proposed, and their performance is numerically investigated by means of finite element methods.

发现光是数字系统和生物系统之间双向接口的基础，包括纳米生物传感和纳米生物致动应用中的双向接口。尽管光收发器的波长可能很小，但光收发器和天线的尺寸可能非常小，目前，现有系统通常依赖于大型和侵入式设备，包括台式显微镜和光谱系统以及光纤技术而不是无线设置。这些在这些新兴领域的可能性和能力之间设置了多个瓶颈。在本文中，开发了统一的理论来设计光学纳米天线阵列，该阵列能够像操纵天线阵列操纵RF辐射一样操纵光。第一的，描述了光学纳米天线阵列在发射，接收和反射中的应用。然后，对影响单个光学天线设计的基本因素进行了描述和建模。研究了光学纳米天线之间的相互耦合，以指导紧凑型天线阵列的发展。提出了不同的波束成形策略，并通过有限元方法对它们的性能进行了数值研究。