Bandwidth Studies on Multimode Polymer Waveguides for \(25\) Gb/s Optical Interconnects

• Published in: IEEE photonics technology letters Vol. 26; no. 20; pp. 2004 - 2007
• Main Authors: Bamiedakis, Nikolaos, Jian Chen, Penty, Richard V., White, Ian H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 15.10.2014; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Adaptive optics; Bandwidth; Continuous improvement; Data transmission; High speed; Impairment; Optical interconnections; Optical interconnects; Optical waveguides; Polymers; Spirals; Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers; Waveguides; multimode waveguides; waveguide bandwidth; board-level optical interconnects; Polymer waveguides
• ISSN: 1041-1135; 1941-0174
• DOI: 10.1109/LPT.2014.2342881

Multimode polymer waveguides constitute a promising technology for use in board-level optical interconnects. However, the continuous improvements in high-speed performance of VCSELs raise important questions about their ability to support such high data rates due to their inherent highly multimoded nature. Thorough experimental studies on the bandwidth of a 1.4-m-long multimode spiral waveguide are presented in this letter, indicating a bandwidth-length product of at least 35 GHz×m even in the case of an overfilled launch. No significant transmission impairments are observed for spatial input offsets, while error-free (BER <; 10 -12 ) data transmission over the 1.4-m-long spiral waveguide is demonstrated at 25 Gb/s.