Flexible optical backplane interconnections

The increasing demand for bandwidth and interconnection density to provide wide bandwidth services at reasonably low cost are rapidly exhausting capabilities of interconnection techniques currently employed in conventional wide bandwidth telecommunication switching equipment. In particular, a bottleneck occurs at the intra-system (that is, board-, shelf- and cabinet-level) backplane interconnections. In order to address this problem, a variety of optical interconnection schemes have been proposed. At Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories, we have taken a systems approach in developing a Z-axis assembly process for producing flexible optical backplane interconnection circuits. This paper describes details of fabrication process and performance of new flexible optical circuits.