Abstract
A miniaturized short-reach active optical interconnect, taking advantage of
collimated beam based optics, is presented, that features a superior structural
tolerance. A receptacle type transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) are introduced, to
precisely interface with a standard multimode fiber in a flexible manner while they are
efficiently operating based on equivalent collimated beams. In particular, the
dependence of the tolerance and optical coupling upon the alignment of constituent
elements is rigorously analyzed through ray optic simulations. Plastic injection molding
was used to produce crucial parts associated with the optical modules; the arrangement
tolerance for the components, such as VCSEL sources, photodetectors (PDs), fibers, and
collimating/focusing lenses, was intensively investigated, by monitoring the beam
patterns in conjunction with the optical coupling. A compact collimated beam was
observed to be generated, providing a divergence of ~ 1.5°. The measured
positional shift for the focused beam was found to be only below 10 μm, in
response to a misalignment of over 300 μm between the collimating and
focusing lens. Thanks to the proposed collimated beam optics, the overall 3-dB alignment
tolerance was substantially enhanced to ~ 25 μm. The optical interconnect
was finally completed by passively aligning the Tx and Rx modules, with an optical loss
of ~ 2.9 and 0.85 dB for the VCSEL-to-fiber and fiber-to-PD coupling,
respectively. Its feasibility was practically ensured by delivering a high speed digital
signal at 2.5 Gb/s and moreover HD-SDI video data, over a 100-m long fiber.
© 2012 IEEE
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