Measurement of propagation characteristics of optical printed circuit board with low-coherence interferometer

Abstract

In this paper, the measurement system based on optical low-coherence interferometry was constructed to characterize propagation characteristics of Optical-Printed Circuit Board (O-PCB). With this system, the propagation loss of optical waveguides embedded in O-PCB was measured, and the back-reflection from several interfaces within O-PCB was done also. The polymer optical waveguide was prepared with UV embossing technique and its core had the width of 50um, the height of 50um, and the length of 2cm, respectively. The propagation loss of the waveguide was measured to be less than 2dB/cm and the back-reflectance at each interconnection point was about 5.83%. In the near future, the sensitivity will be improved with applying the balanced detection and signal modulation techniques in order to measure propagation characteristics of more complex O-PCB.