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A terabit capacity passive polymer optical backplane based on a  novel meshed waveguide architecture

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Abstract

An optical backplane based on a meshed polymer waveguide architecture enabling high-speed board-to-board optical interconnection is presented. This planar array of multimode polymer waveguides can provide passive strictly non-blocking links between server line cards fitted with optical transmitter and receiver arrays. This architecture offers a scalable and low-cost solution to the bandwidth limitations faced by electrical backplanes and is suitable for PCB integration. The reported backplane demonstrator uses a matrix of 100 waveguides each capable of 10 Gb/s operation to interconnect 10 cards for a total capacity of a terabit per second aggregate data rate in multicast mode. Characterisation of the backplane demonstrator reveals low link losses of 2 to 8 dB for a multimode fibre input and crosstalk values below −35 dB. Error free data transmission at 10 Gb/s is achieved with a power penalty of only 0.2 dB at a bit-error-rate of 10−9. Additionally, lossless operation of a Gigabit Ethernet link over the backplane is achieved even when using the worst-case highest loss links.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Photonic Systems, Electrical Engineering Division, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, 9 JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0FA, UK

    J. Beals IV, N. Bamiedakis, A. Wonfor, R. V. Penty & I. H. White

  2. Dow Corning Corporation, 2200 W. Salzburg Rd, Midland, MI, 48686, USA

    J. V. DeGroot Jr., K. Hueston & T. V. Clapp

  3. Intel Research, 4720 Forbes Ave, Suite 410, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    M. Glick

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  1. J. Beals IV
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  2. N. Bamiedakis
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  3. A. Wonfor
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  4. R. V. Penty
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  5. I. H. White
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  6. J. V. DeGroot Jr.
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  7. K. Hueston
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  9. M. Glick
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Correspondence to J. Beals IV.

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Beals, J., Bamiedakis, N., Wonfor, A. et al. A terabit capacity passive polymer optical backplane based on a  novel meshed waveguide architecture. Appl. Phys. A 95, 983–988 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-009-5108-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-009-5108-3

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