Papakonstantinou, Ioannis; (2012) Analysis design and measurement of guided wave optical backplane interconnection. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Optics has been long regarded as the prominent alternative to electronics, to address the serious interconnects bottleneck in high-speed backplane printed circuit boards. In this thesis, we present our work towards the realization of a robust and cost effective 10 Gb/s optically interconnected backplane aimed at switching and storage applications. In the course of this work, we experimentally analyzed optical waveguides and advanced electromagnetic theories and algorithms to explain light propagation phenomena. We experimentally characterized the insertion loss for dielectric waveguide bends of rectangular cross-section for a range of radii of curvature and waveguide widths and generated useful design rules. We then used the Beam Propagation Method (BPM) to separate insertion loss into its individual loss components and developed a ray-tracing model to gain further insight into propagation in waveguide bends. We developed a novel waveguiding component called the tapered bend, which integrated a tapered waveguide with a bend. We expanded intrinsic mode theory, widely known in the acoustic wave field, to explain adiabatic propagation phenomena in tapered bends before, at and after modal cut-off. The proposed electromagnetic theory has significant implications since it can be used for tapered waveguides in general inhomogeneous media. We experimentally measured the insertion loss of the tapered bend and characterized the coupling efficiency tolerance under source misalignment for a range of radii and taper ratios. We developed a semi-analytic algorithm to calculate the radiation modes of rectangular waveguides, based on a non-liner transformation of the wave equation and a Fourier decomposition method. The proposed method is very powerful and can be used in waveguides of arbitrary shape with some additional computational complexity. We applied the coupled mode theory to the computed radiation modes and we calculated the equilibrium distance, the steady state power distribution, and the propagation loss for multimode rectangular waveguides with sidewall roughness. These are the first reported calculations of this kind for rectangular waveguides, to the best of our knowledge. Finally, we designed a novel optical connector based on the mechanically transferable (MT) technology for accurate passive alignment between arrays of waveguides and active devices. In addition, we built a prototype optical backplane system to demonstrate the operation of our connector, and we monitored its performance by subjecting it to a test cycle of a number of engagements. We experimentally characterized the VCSEL sources used in the prototype and generated contour maps of coupling loss as a function of source misalignments. For the first time reported in literature, we measured cross-talk as a function of VCSEL lateral misalignment.

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