Abstract
In this paper, high-speed optical ribbon couplers for card-to-backplane
interconnect applications are presented. The ribbon couplers are based on
evanescent coupling between flexible multimode waveguide arrays. A soft lithographic
technique is utilized to fabricate the ribbons. A flexible nonterminating
optical data bus has been developed. Using BeamPROP software, we simulated
the evanescent light coupling between two closely spaced ribbon waveguides
to study the effects of waveguides separation, interaction length, and misalignment
on coupling efficiency. Further experimental analysis and tests have been
performed to quantify these effects. To investigate data transmission performance,
a 12-channel optical interconnect link has been assembled. Experimental results
demonstrated successful evanescent coupling; facilitating auto alignment coupling
between card and backplane ribbon waveguides at data speeds as high as 10
Gb/s per channel. The evident high-speed interconnect performance and rapid
ribbon prototyping approach can result in overall lower cost coupler fabrication
for prospective optical interconnect applications.
© 2008 IEEE
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