An Optical Backplane Connection System with Pluggable Active Board Interfaces.

Purpose – To present work and characterisation results from a project to develop a pluggable optical connector for board to board interconnect.Design/methodology/approach – An optical backplane connection system is described, which allows for repeatable docking and undocking of an active optical interface housed on a daughtercard to waveguides fabricated on an optical backplane.Findings – The optical backplane connection system described has demonstrated its successful implementation with respect to optical data transfer across multimode polymer waveguides. Measurement results presented show that such a system is a viable approach toward the application of pluggable optical backplane interconnects.Research limitations/implications – The direct connection to the exposed waveguide interface results in considerable optical loss and scattering. Future designs will have to address this. Additional work should also be undertaken to develop a means of connector engagement that is autonomous and requires no user ...