Optical backplanes are attractive components for systems with high data rates between subsystems and a large number of interconnects. An optical backplane which uses multimode polymer waveguides was originally developed for avionic applications but can be used in telecom switching systems as well. For transmission distances in the range of 100 cm and data rates up to 10 Gbps, the modal dispersion can be neglected. The waveguides are fabricated on large substrates (aluminum, FR4 and others) by a direct writing technique. Splitters and couplers can be fabricated with the same technique. The waveguides have a low loss (0.04 dB/cm) and high temperature stability (up to 250 degrees C) and are used with 840 nm vertical cavity lasers. The waveguide cross section can be chosen between approx. 250 mu m x 250 mu m and 50 mu m x 50 mu m. We have successfully transmitted up to 10 Gbit/s over multimode polymer waveguides with lengths of 100 cm. A free space, expanded beam coupling is used for the board-backplane transition, resulting in high alignment tolerances. The overall insertion loss for a backplane connection is typically between 2 and 8 dB, depending on waveguide length, radius of curvature, number of waveguide crossings etc. A typical transceiver power budget of 15-20 dB allows the integration of star couplers with up to 16 ports. Several test systems with different interconnection schemes have been realized and tested. Tests include mechanical stability (vibration), thermal stability (cycles, shocks and accelerated aging) and gamma irradiation as well as optical power levels, signal integrity and bit error rates.


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    Intelligent optical backplanes

    Szymanski, T. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1995


    Progress in Free-Space Optical Backplanes

    IEEE / Lasers and Electro-Optics Society | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1995


    Limitations to and Solutions for Optical Loss in Optical Backplanes

    Uhlig, S. / Robertsson, M. | British Library Online Contents | 2006


    Backplanes für Elektronen und Photonen

    Eifer, Bernd | IuD Bahn | 2003


    FET-SEED-based free-space optical backplanes (Abstract Only) [2153-41]

    Plant, D. V. / Hinton, H. S. / SPIE | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1994