A new and innovative interconnection technology applicable for printed circuit boards is presented. This technology is widely compatible with the existing design and manufacturing processes and technologies for conventional multilayer pc boards and it combines electrical and optical interconnects on pc board level. It provides the potential for on-board bandwidth of several Gb/s and closes the bottleneck caused by the limited performance of electrical interconnection technology. After giving an overview on the most important basic technologies and first available results and engineering samples, the focus of this paper is on the development of appropriate modeling methodologies and simulation algorithms necessary for designing and optimizing optical on-board interconnects within the conventional electrical pc board environment.Index Terms-Board-integrated multimode waveguides, design and modeling of optical multimode interconnects, electrical-optical printed circuit boards, modeling of laser-diodes and photodiodes, optical interconnection technology.

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Due to ever-faster processor clock speeds, there is a rising need for increased bandwidth to transfer large amounts of data, noise-free, within computer and telecommunications systems. A related requirement is the demand for high bit-rate, short-haul links. Here, optical transmission paths are a viable alternative to high-frequency electrical interconnections, whereby layers with integrated waveguides are particularly suitable. The reasons for this include that a higher connection density can be achieved and the power dissipation, as well as interference from electromagnetic radiation, are significantly lower. The article presents general considerations and the results of research conducted by the German BMBF Project NeGIT, into the manufacture of circuit boards with embedded polymer optical waveguides. The electrical-optical boards were fabricated using precise photolithographic processes and standard lamination methods. They possess the thermal stability necessary for manufacturing processes and operational conditions, in terms of both bond strength and the stability of the optical properties. As part of this project, a design of an optical coupling in the daughter card and board backplane interfaces was developed and is presented as the centerpiece of this study.

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