1060-nm 10-Gb/s × 12-channel parallel-optical modules for optical interconnects

Optical interconnects has been a key technology to realize signal transmission in rack-to-rack application where active optical cables (AOCs) such as QSFP have been employed so far. At present, it is required to mount parallel-optical modules with high-density to increase multiple numbers of signals in board-to-board applications which are highly expected in the next order of rack-to-rack applications. On the other hand, power reduction is a key issue in the next generation board-to-board optical interconnects where a low power consumption as same as 10 mW/Gb/s/link is required based on the trend of power reduction. To realize low power optical interconnects, we have been proposing 1060-nm optical interconnects which also achieve high speed modulation, high reliability, and high signal quality. We fabricated TX and RX 1060-nm 10-Gb/s × 12-channel parallel-optical modules. The mechanical size is as small as 13 mm × 13 mm × 3.4 mm. Operating all 12 channels in TX and RX parallel-optical modules simultaneously, we have achieved error-free transmission over the case temperature range ranging up 15°C to 80°C in back-to-back. We also achieved error-free transmission for a legacy OM-2 multimode fiber of 300m with the power penalty less than 2.0 dB. By using high-efficient 1060 nm VCSELs, power reduction is expected where we achieved optical link power of 7 mW/Gb/s/link at the case temperature of 80°C. We performed reliability tests based on Tercordia GR-468. The results show that the optical modules are highly reliable since the variation of optical output power is less than ±10% in all reliability tests.