Ribbon plastic optical fiber linked optical transmitter and receiver modules featuring a high alignment tolerance

Abstract

Ribbon plastic optical fiber (POF) linked four-channel optical transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) modules have been proposed and realized featuring an excellent alignment tolerance. The two modules share a common configuration involving an optical sub-assembly (OSA) with vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs)/photodetectors (PDs), and their driver ICs, which are integrated onto a single printed circuit board (PCB) substrate. The OSA includes an alignment structure, a beam router and a fiber guide, which were produced by using plastic injection molding. We have accomplished a fully passive alignment between the VCSELs/PDs and the ribbon POF by taking advantage of the alignment structure that serves as a reference during the alignment of the constituent parts of the OSA. The electrical link, which largely determines the operation speed, has been remarkably shortened, due to a direct wire-bonding between the VCSELs/PDs and the driver circuits. The light sources and the detectors can be individually positioned, thereby overcoming the pitch limitations of the ribbon POF, which is made up of perfluorinated graded-index (GI) POF with a 62.5 μm core diameter. The overall alignment tolerance was first assessed by observing the optical coupling efficiency in terms of VCSEL/PD misalignment. The horizontal and vertical 3-dB alignment tolerances were about 20 μm and 150 μm for the Tx and 50 μm and over 200 μm for the Rx, respectively. The VCSEL-to-POF coupling loss for the Tx and the POF-to-PD loss for the Rx were 3.25 dB and 1.35 dB at a wavelength of 850 nm, respectively. Subsequently, a high-speed signal at 3.2 Gb/s was satisfactorily delivered via the Tx and Rx modules over a temperature range of -30 to 70°C with no significant errors; the channel crosstalk was below -30 dB. Finally, the performance of the prepared modules was verified by transmitting a 1080p HDMI video supplied by a Bluelay player to an LCD TV.

High-speed Light Peak optical link for high energy applications

“…3. With the lens, the precision in alignment is relaxed to 5 μm [8] to yield uniform coupling efficiency of 4 80%. The typical coupling loss in production modules is À 3 dB.…”

An inverse Prandtl–Ishlinskii model based decoupling control methodology for a 3-DOF flexure-based mechanism

“…Micro/nano positioning is one of the key enabling techniques in the scientific and engineering fields including AFM (Atomic Force Microscopy) [1], STM (Scanning Tunnel Microscopy) [2], optical fiber alignment [3,4], bio-micro-surgery [5,6] and micro-assembly [7,8]. In order to reach the required high precision, the piezo-driven flexure-based mechanism has been widely used due to the large output force and quick response [9][10][11].…”

Design issues for a passively aligned optical sub assembly module

“…Its cost effectiveness is dependent on a passively assembled optical sub assembly (OSA) module, involving a light source, a lens, a fiber, and a photodetector [2]. In this work we aimed to explore the precise modeling of the light source and its effect on the optical coupling efficiency.…”