An 8-Gb/s optical backplane bus based on microchannel interconnects: design, fabrication, and performance measurements

Abstract

We describe the characteristics of a microchannelbased optical backplane including signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), interconnect distances, and data transfer rates. The backplane employs 250 m-spacing two-dimensional (2-D) vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) and a microlens array to implement 500 m-, 750 m-, and 1-mm optical beam arrays. By integrating the transmitter and a multiplexed polymeric hologram as a deflector/beam-splitter for the guided-wave optical backplane, the result demonstrates a multibus line architecture and its high-speed characteristics. Maximum interconnect distances of 6 cm and 14 cm can be achieved to satisfy 10 12 bit error rate (BER) using 2 2 beams of 500 m-and 1 mm-spacing array devices. The total data transfer rate of the developed backplane has shown 8 Gb/s from eye diagram measurements.

Fabrication of Multimode Polymeric Waveguides and Micromirrors Using Deep X-Ray Lithography

“…INTRODUCTION W ITH RECENT advances in digital network and communication, the demand for wide bandwidth, high density, and low electromagnetic interference has been increased significantly in computing and switching systems [1], [2]. Polymeric optical waveguides are receiving much attention for planar photonic and optoelectronic application such as optical interconnects because of their relatively easy and low-cost fabrication and easy integration with other optoelectronic devices [3]- [6].…”

Stacked Polymeric Multimode Waveguide Arrays for Two-Dimensional Optical Interconnects

“…and are the area of a waveguide and input mode size, which are 50 m and a circle with 20 m in diameter in our case, respectively. The value is related to the divergence angle of a VCSEL by (2) where is the source power of VCSEL and is the half-power of , which means that is 0.5 at divergence angle. The VCSEL used in this paper has a full-angle beam divergence of 12 at the 3 dB power points, which in turn gives the value of 126.…”

“…Two-dimensional (2-D) parallel optical interconnects using 2-D arrays of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) and photodiodes (PDs) have large connectivity between elements in computing and switching systems. Two-dimensional optical interconnects within a short distance for chip-to-chip interconnects have been developed using various methods such as free-space microoptic components [1], [2] and plastic optical fibers (POFs) [3], [4]. Free-space optical interconnection is ideal for a high number of densely spaced channels.…”

A method for rebroadcasting signals in an optical backplane bus system

“…3), it is impossible to obtain fan-outs of uniform intensity for all the cases where the modulated optical signals originate from different boards. Even optimizing the diffraction efficiencies of the holographic gratings still results in nonuniformity among output signals in earlier reported optical backplane designs based on the guided-wave approach [3]- [5]. In a free-space optical bus system [6], [7], optimization is also required, as well as a large number of holograms to provide signal broadcasting (Fig.…”