Jan Popelek

Clock delivery using laminated polymer fibre circuits

We demonstrate a thin-cladding polymer-fibre-based optical clock distribution circuit for board-level optical clock delivery applications. The robust yet flexible 1-to-64 node distribution scheme offers, at 30 cm distribution length, 9.45 GHz bandwidth, 23 ps optical skews, 3.5 dB power distribution uniformity and an overall excess loss of 6.2 dB.

Volume-consumption comparisons of free-space and guided-wave optical interconnections

We compare volume-consumption characteristics of free-space and guided-wave optical interconnections. System volume consumption is used as a fundamental measure of various point-to-point space-invariant and space-variant interconnections of two-dimensional arrays of N(1/2) x N(1/2) points. We show that, in free-space and space-invariant situations, although volume consumption for macroaperture optics is O1(N(3/2)), where O denotes the order, it is only O2(N) for microaperture optics. For free-space and space-variant operations only microaperture optics is possible without fundamental power losses. The corresponding minimum volume consumption is O3(N3). We show that single microaperture-per-channel implementations of either space-invariant or space-variant operations are, in general, more volume efficient than are their two-cascade microaperture-per-channel counterparts. We also show that, for minimizing volume consumption, the optimum relative apertures F#(opt) for space-variant optical elements are, respectively, (5N)(1/2)/4 for a single microaperture-per-channel geometry and (5N)(1/2)/2 for a two-cascade microaperture-per-channel geometry. In guided-wave or fiber interconnect cases our study shows that the volume consumption for space-invariant and space-variant operations is O4(N), with O4 < O2, and O5(N(3/2)), respectively. Thus an important conclusion of the study is that free-space optics is less volume efficient than is guided-wave optics in both space-invariant and space-variant interconnect applications.

Free-space fiber hybrid distributed optical cross-connect interconnect module.

We propose implementing a large-scale optical cross-connect network based on a free-space-fiber hybrid interconnect system. The free-space portion of the system is designed to handle shuffle operation of optical beams that need to intersect each other. The fiber portion is used to guide these signals to and from optical transceivers, which can be distributed at different locations. A compact and packaged prototype that handles 256x256 input-output channels is demonstrated.

Beam-splitting ball lens:?a new integrated optical component

A beam-splitting ball lens is introduced as a new integrated optical component for board- and backplane-level optical interconnection applications. The proposed beam-splitting ball lenses can be used in conjunction with polymer fiber image guides to split and combine imaged patterns of two-dimensional array optical data. Power and resolution performance parameters of a packaged system are presented.

Mixed Mode Modelling by VHDL-AMS

Abstract The two solutions are used for mixed mode modelling: the system level modelling and the transistor level one. The both approaches are used through analogue-mixed signal designing. The VHDL-AMS (VHDL - Analogue & Mixed Signals) supplements the sequential and concurrent statements of VHDL-I076 with a new class of language statements for description of differential and algebraic equations. These are the simultaneous statements. Simultaneous statements contain ordinary VHDL expressions that can be evaluated in the ordinary way. The other way of modelling is based on transistor level solutions. It is necessary for practical design to be applicable requirements of models in the language imposed by the design objective to support a migration path for SPICE models.

Polymer optical fibers for computer board and back-plane interconnections

We discuss needs for using large-bandwidth, EMI-free optical interconnects inside computer systems and why the back-plane is the first possibility of applying optical technology. We compare free-space and guided-wave optical solutions for various fundamental and practical measures and show our conclusion that 2D data-capable guided wave optical channels can offer most competitive solutions. We capitalize on various unique advantages that a polymer optical fiber offers and propose to combine such fibers and embedding techniques we developed to deliver reliable optical channels on conventional printed circuit boards and back-planes. We show that an embedded polymer fiber opticaldistribution circuit can effectively deliver low-loss and high uniformity clock data up to 10Gb/s. We extend the concept of embedding to the multi-layer point-to-point 2D parallel optical back-plane. To further extend the capability of these optical data highways to incorporate data-sharing functionality, compact and integrated free-space optical components are proposed to serve as image-splitting devices. We discuss various recent experiments in our lab and present several demonstration prototypes during our presentation.

16/spl times/16 array interconnects using a fiber and free-space hybrid interconnect module

A cross-connect switch has two essential components: a switch and an interconnect. The switch is not the topic of the present work. On the other hand, this work focuses on implementing efficient optical array interconnects using a k-shuffle topology. We have demonstrated a 256/spl times/256 channel free-space and fiber hybrid cross-connect device.

Packaged and connectorized optical interconnect circuits for optoelectronic cross-connect switching

Cross-connect switching is a common switching architecture for telecom and datacom applications. Large bandwidth O-E interface devices have recently been made commercially available. Small scale fast electronic switches and large scale optical interconnect circuits can be effectively used for handling large bandwidth O-E cross-connect switching. In this paper, we show two packaged and connectorized optical interconnect circuits. The first one is a 100 X 100 channel guided-wave circuit fully compatible, through MT array connectors, to O-E interface devices, such as Motorola OPTOBUSTM or Simens PAROLITM chips. The second one is a more scalable architecture which is a hybrid of free- space and fiber circuits. For demonstration purpose, a 256 X 256 channel hybrid circuit is shown. Key parameters, such as insertion loss, cross-talk, and bit-error-rate of these interconnect circuits are presented. Transmission and routing of video data are performed to demonstrate interconnect quality of various data links. Scalability of these demonstrated circuits to larger sizes are speculated.

Linear cylindrical taper as optical line source.

We propose to use a linear cylindrical taper as an optical line illuminator for various light-emitting-diode-based emerging scanning and display applications. A simple model to explain the mechanism of this line illuminator is presented. Experimental verifications are performed, and main performance characteristics are discussed.