Reduced Cladding Diameter Fibers for High-Density Optical Interconnects

Abstract

Data centers are continually striving to meet the challenge of delivering more bandwidth, and this will require higher capacity optical switches and servers. One proposal for achieving this higher bandwidth density is to use embedded optical transceivers, which have arrays of VCSEL or silicon-photonic lasers integrated into on-board and co-packaged optics. The capacities of these transceivers are limited by the densities of the arrays, which in turn depend on the physical dimensions of the optical fibers that are coupled to the chip. This size constraint is motivating component manufacturers to consider using optical fibers with reduced cladding (RC) and coating diameters to enable higher density interconnects. In this paper, we introduce bend-insensitive single-mode and multimode RC fibers that have low attenuation, low bend loss, and are backward-compatible with the installed base of standard optical fibers. We also discuss how these RC fibers can be integrated into fiber array units to create a high-density fiber-chip connectivity solution.