Flexible multimode polymer waveguides for versatile high-speed optical interconnects

Bamiedakis, N.; Shi, Fengyuan; Chu, Daping; Penty, R.V.; White, I.H.

doi:10.1109/icton.2017.8024922

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Various flexible multimode polymer waveguide technologies have been developed in recent years by different groups and some studies on the performance of the waveguides under flexure have been reported [26]- [32]. For example, in [28], bending loss measurements on flexible multimode waveguides using a 62.5 µm multimode fibre (MMF) input indicate that no significant bending loss is induced for a 360°bend for a radius larger than 3 cm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible Multimode Polymer Waveguide Arrays for Versatile High-Speed Short-Reach Communication Links

Shi

Bamiedakis

Vasil'ev

et al. 2018

J. Lightwave Technol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Optical interconnects play an important role in enabling high-speed short-reach communication links within nextgeneration high-performance electronic systems. Multimode polymer waveguides in particular allow the formation of high-capacity optical backplanes and cost-effective board-level optical interconnects. Their formation on flexible substrates offers significant practical advantages and enables their deployment in environments where shape and weight conformity become particularly important, such as in cars and aircraft. However, bending and twisting of flexible multimode waveguides can have a significant effect on their optical transmission performance due to mode loss and mode coupling. Moreover, the magnitude of the induced effects strongly depends on the launch conditions employed. In this paper, therefore, we present detailed loss, crosstalk, and bandwidth studies on flexible multimode waveguide arrays for different launch conditions regarding their use in real-world systems. The minimum radius to achieve a 1 dB excess bending loss is obtained for each launch condition as well as the crosstalk degradation due to bending. It is shown that for a 50 µm MMF input, a 6 mm bending radius is required for excess losses below 1 dB, while crosstalk below −35 dB is obtained in adjacent waveguides even under strong bending. Moreover, it is found that twisting has a small effect on the loss and crosstalk performance of the samples. Excess twisting loss less than 0.1 dB and crosstalk of −40 dB are obtained for three full 360°turns under a 50 µm MMF launch. Finally, the bandwidth studies carried out on the samples indicate than no significant bandwidth degradation is induced due to sample bending, with bandwidth-length product values larger than 150 GHz × m obtained for restricted launches. The set of results presented herein specify the deployment of this flexible polymer multimode waveguide technology in real-world systems and demonstrate its strong potential to implement low-loss highbandwidth optical interconnects.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible Multimode Polymer Waveguide Arrays for Versatile High-Speed Short-Reach Communication Links

Shi

Bamiedakis

Vasil'ev

et al. 2018

J. Lightwave Technol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Various flexible polymer waveguide technologies have been developed in recent years and related opto-electronic subassemblies have been reported [9][10][11][12]. Flexible siloxane-based waveguides have been fabricated with good performance [12], while we have recently reported detailed studies on the loss and bandwidth performance of such flexible waveguide ribbons when bending or twisting is applied [13,14]. Although data transmission at rates up to 25 Gb/s has been reported over flexible polymer multimode waveguides [9,15,16], these demonstrations only High-Speed Data Transmission over Flexible Multimode Polymer Waveguides Under Flexure Nikolaos Bamiedakis, Fengyuan Shi, Daping Chu, Senior Member, IEEE, Richard V. Penty, Senior Member, IEEE and Ian H. White, Fellow, IEEE involved straight waveguides with short lengths of ≤ 20 cm, whilst no particular studies have been carried out on their performance under flexure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-Speed Data Transmission Over Flexible Multimode Polymer Waveguides Under Flexure

Bamiedakis

Shi

Chu

et al. 2018

IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Polymer multimode waveguides on flexible substrates enable the formation of bendable low-cost optical interconnects that can be deployed in a wide range of applications. However, the highly-multimoded nature of such guides in combination with the stress and mode mixing induced due to sample bending raise important concerns about the effect that sample flexure has on their bandwidth performance and potential to support high-speed data transmission. In this work therefore, we present data transmission studies on a 1 m long flexible spiral waveguide when flexure is applied. The flexible polymer sample is bent 180° around a cylindrical mandrel and the loss and frequency response of the waveguide are obtained for radii of curvature down to 4 mm and are compared with the performance obtained when no flexure is applied. The BER performance of the respective optical link is also recorded at data rates up to 40 Gb/s. A flat frequency response up to at least 30 GHz is demonstrated for all bending radii applied and error-free (BER<10 -12 ) data transmission is achieved for all data rates studied up to 40 Gb/s. The results clearly demonstrate that sample flexing does not result in any significant transmission impairments in such links and highlight the strong potential of this technology for use in high-speed board-level interconnections.

show abstract

Flexible multimode polymer waveguides for versatile high-speed optical interconnects

Cited by 2 publications

References 1 publication

Flexible Multimode Polymer Waveguide Arrays for Versatile High-Speed Short-Reach Communication Links

Flexible Multimode Polymer Waveguide Arrays for Versatile High-Speed Short-Reach Communication Links

High-Speed Data Transmission Over Flexible Multimode Polymer Waveguides Under Flexure

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About