MULTICHANNEL OPTICAL MODULES COMPATIBLE WITH THE FIBER-IN-BOARD TECHNOLOGY

Fiber-in-board technology offers a full solution for high-speed parall el interconnections. Packaging techniques compatible with this board t echnology have been realized. Two different solutions are presented fo r the fiber alignment in the module, The first technique is based on a silicon motherboard bench with etched V-grooves and thermo compressio n flip-chip bonding, The second technique is based on a vacuum pick-up tool, capable of handling 16 multimode fibers, A dedicated alignment piece has been developed for interfacing the fibers towards the optica l contact in the board, For the realization of electrical interconnect ions inside the module, three different substrate technologies are eva luated, First, prototypes were elaborated in a thin-film technology, F or the electrical interface of the silicon motherboard a standard thic k-film technology was used, A novel thick-film technology based on the FODEL(TM) material, which offers high density interconnection capabil ities, was used for the development of an alternative packaging techni que. The different modules were tested and integrated in a system demo nstrator, Four parallel. on-board optical links were operational at 31 1 Mb/s, The speed was limited by the receiver electronics, which were designed for operation at 155 Mb/s.