Parallel optical interconnects for high performance printed circuit boards

A novel and innovative interconnection technology for printed circuit board application is presented which is able to meet the high performance requirements of future electronic equipment while at the same time improving the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) significantly. This technology will have a far-reaching compatibility with the existing printed circuit board technology, which means that the design and manufacturing processes of the electrical part do not need significant modifications. After a short description of the most important basic technologies and results for its realization, the paper focuses on the design and modeling of parallel electrical/optical interconnection systems. Transient analysis is addressed in order to provide an efficient analysis methodology as well as algorithms for timing and signal integrity prediction necessary for designing and manufacturing high-speed electronic systems of high quality. The developed overall modeling strategy is explained and first available results are presented. Besides a time domain transmission line model for parallel optical multimode structures considering delay, losses, dispersion, and crosstalk the corresponding modeling approaches for laser- and photo-diodes are presented.