High-speed reconfigurable card-to-card optical interconnects based on hybrid free-space and multi-mode fiber propagations

In this paper, a high-speed reconfigurable card-to-card optical interconnect architecture based on hybrid free-space and multi-mode fiber (MMF) propagation is proposed. The use of free-space signal transmission provides flexibility and reconfigurability and the MMF extends the achievable interconnection range. A printed-circuit-board (PCB) based integrated optical interconnect module is designed and developed and proof-of-concept demonstration experiments are carried out. Results show that 3 × 10 Gb/s reconfigurable optical interconnect is realized with ∼12 cm free-space propagation and a 10 m MMF length. In addition, since air turbulence due to high temperature of electronic components and heat dissipation fans always exists in typical interconnect environments and it normally results in system performance degradation, its impact on the proposed reconfigurable optical interconnect scheme is also experimentally investigated. Results indicate that even with comparatively strong air turbulence, 3 × 10 Gb/s optical interconnects with flexibility can still be achieved and the power penalty is < 0.7 dB.