Abstract

The popularity of using integrated planar-optic (IPO) packages as an optical backplane for board-to-board interconnection is growing because of their compactness, high bandwidth, flexibility, and efficiency. An efficient design strategy for such optical backplane interconnect packages is developed by maximizing the alignability of such packages. The alignability is a probability based measure of the ease with which an optical interconnect system can be aligned. An IPO package that is designed for the maximum alignability is most likely to achieve a high interconnect efficiency, robustness, and yield during manufacturing. The efficiency of power transfer and the alignability of IPO packages can be calculated as a function of the lateral and angular offsets in the input, the error in the spatial frequencies of the hologram, the distance between the boards, the thickness of the substrate, and the sizes of the holograms and the beam spot. From these calculations, guidelines on choosing these parameters are developed. The maximum alignability can be obtained by optimizing the reflection angle or the substrate thickness of the IPO package as a function of these parameters. A software package has been developed for performing such optimizations. The software can be fruitfully used for design and manufacturing of all types of IPO interconnect packages.

© 1992 Optical Society of America