Abstract
The
protocol data rate governing data storage devices will increase to over 12
Gb/s by 2013 thereby imposing unmanageable cost and performance burdens on
future digital data storage systems. The resulting performance bottleneck
can be substantially reduced by conveying high-speed data optically instead
of electronically. A novel active pluggable 82.5 Gb/s aggregate bit rate optical
connector technology, the design and fabrication of a compact electro-optical
printed circuit board to meet exacting specifications, and a method for low
cost, high precision, passive optical
assembly are presented. A demonstration platform was constructed to assess
the viability of embedded electro-optical midplane technology in such systems
including the first ever demonstration of a pluggable active optical waveguide
printed circuit board connector. High-speed optical data transfer at 10.3125 Gb/s
was demonstrated through a complex polymer waveguide interconnect layer embedded
into a 262 mm × 240 mm × 4.3 mm electro-optical midplane. Bit error rates of less than 10<sup>-12</sup> and optical
losses as low as 6 dB were demonstrated through nine multimode polymer wave guides
with an aggregate data bandwidth of 92.8125 Gb/s.
© 2012 IEEE
PDF Article
More Like This
Cited By
Optica participates in Crossref's Cited-By Linking service. Citing articles from Optica Publishing Group journals and other participating publishers are listed here.