Abstract
Optical interconnects have attracted considerable attention for use in short-reach communication links within high-performance electronic systems, such as data centers, supercomputers, and data storage systems. Multimode polymer waveguides, in particular, constitute an attractive technology for use in board-level interconnects as they can be cost-effectively integrated onto standard PCBs and allow system assembly with relaxed alignment tolerances. However, their highly multimoded nature raises important concerns about their bandwidth limitations and their potential to support very high on-board data rates. In this paper, we report record error-free (BER <; 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-12</sup> ) 40 Gb/s data transmission over a 1-m-long multimode polymer spiral waveguide and present thorough studies on the waveguide bandwidth performance. The frequency response of the waveguide is investigated under a wide range of launch conditions and in the presence of input spatial offsets, which are expected to be highly-likely in real-world systems. A robust bandwidth performance is observed with a bandwidth-length product of at least 35 GHz×m for all launch conditions studied. The reported results clearly demonstrate the potential of this technology for use in board-level interconnects, and indicate that data rates of at least 40 Gb/s are feasible over waveguide lengths of 1 m.
Highlights
O PTICAL technologies have attracted considerable interest in recent years for use in short-reach communication links
The results demonstrate the potential of this technology for use in board-level optical interconnects at data rates of 40 Gb/s or higher and address concerns about its suitability for use in next-generation high-performance electronic systems
The results clearly demonstrate the potential to use this technology for use in board-level optical interconnects at data rates of 40 Gb/s, despite the multimode nature of the waveguide and its relatively long length
Summary
O PTICAL technologies have attracted considerable interest in recent years for use in short-reach communication links. There has been a continuous improvement in their high-speed performance with most recent reports demonstrating up to 64 Gb/s direct modulation operation [30]–[33] These improvements in conjunction with the highly-multimoded nature of the polymer waveguides, raise important questions about the bandwidth limits of this technology for high-speed board-level optical interconnects and its capability to support high data rates over distances beyond few tens of centimetres. We utilise a new 1 m long polymer multimode spiral waveguide with improved loss characteristics and demonstrate record error-free (BER < 10−12) 40 Gb/s data transmission over such a waveguide length. The results demonstrate the potential of this technology for use in board-level optical interconnects at data rates of 40 Gb/s or higher and address concerns about its suitability for use in next-generation high-performance electronic systems.
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