A multistage free-stage optical interconnect for backplane applications: implementation issues

Free-space optical interconnects represent a possible solution to the interconnection bottleneck encountered at the backplane level of high performance electronic systems. One of the critical challenges in this field is the development of robust, misalignment tolerant, field serviceable micro-optical hardware. Here we describe the implementation of the micro-optical modules required for a multistage 256 channel optical interconnects.