A novel card-edge connector is proposed that achieves high-speed and compactness through the use of a novel structure with sub-assemblies of a terminal electrode module. An eight-channel double-sided mount, card-edge-connected optical transceiver module was developed by using the connector and our enabling technologies consisting of a highspeed FPC connector, an inductive peaking line, and an integrated lens on a photo diode. Clear eye openings and error-free operation were obtained at 40 Gb/s.
IntroductionOptical interconnection is one of the key technologies for overcoming bandwidth bottlenecks in high-performance computing systems and high-end servers [1], [2]. Several studies have been conducted on high-speed, multi-channel optical transceivers that use flexible printed circuits (FPCs) in combination with polymer optical waveguides [3], [4]. This is because an architecture that uses an FPC with a polymer waveguide is one of the most promising candidates for potentially enabling high-density and low-cost production.We previously proposed an optical transceiver based on optical engines (OEs) that use polymer waveguides and FPCs. The FPC based optical engine (FPC-OE) is composed of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) array, a driver, a photodiode (PD) array, and a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) mounted by flip-chip bonding on the FPC [5]. A thin microlens-imprinted film is attached to the bottom of the FPC. The film is then pasted on a polymer waveguide that has a 45° mirror. The FPC has through-holes just beneath the VCSEL and PD so that the FPC does not interfere with the lens structure, as shown in Fig. 1. These simple passivealignment processes reduce the assembly cost. We also reported that the FPC-OE successfully operated at up to 40 Gb/s by employing a high-speed FPC connector [6] and an integrated lens using inkjet technology for a small-diameter PD to extend the frequency bandwidth on electrical and optical packaging [7].We also proposed an eight-channel double-sided mount, card-edge-connected optical transceiver module (DCOM) that uses the FPC-OEs. The FPC-OEs are placed and connected on both surfaces of the transceiver substrate with FPC connectors. The transceiver has a card-edge electrical interface and is mounted on a board with a right-angle cardedge connector. The advantages of this module are its reduced footprint size and effective utilization of the vertical dimension [9]. The compactness and high-speed characteristics of the DCOM structure strongly depend on the