Free-Space Optical Interconnection Techniques and Issues

The continuing increases in clock speed and electronic complexity of today's high performance digital systems have led to widespread investigation of new multi-technology interconnect and packaging solutions. Optical interconnects may be one such solution. Free-space optical interconnects (FSOIs) offer an evolutionary means of extending the performance of electronic technology by alleviating the communication "bottlenecks" in systems needing high speed, high density interconnections. Rather than concentrating the optical energy via waveguides, free-space optical interconnects use the dimension perpendicular to the planes containing the electronics, transmitter, and receivers. Electrical interconnection design becomes more difficult with increasing data rates, interconnects lengths, and I/O density.