K. Hirabayashi et al., OPTICAL BEAM DIRECTION COMPENSATING SYSTEM FOR BOARD-TO-BOARD FREE-SPACE OPTICAL INTERCONNECTION IN HIGH-CAPACITY ATM SWITCH, Journal of lightwave technology, 15(5), 1997, pp. 874-882
In interconnections between bookshelf-assembled asynchronous transfer
mode (ATM) switch boards, a large number of micro-optical signal beams
can be optically interconnected by a beam direction compensating syst
em using a vertical cavity surface emitting laser, an x-y beam positio
ning sensor and a beam deflector made of an adjustable liquid prism, T
his beam direction compensating system can suppress the decrease in co
upling efficiency between transmitters and receivers to no more than 1
5%, even if boards are inserted and extracted repeatedly, and are shoc
ked repeatedly at a high intensity of 100 G. The compensation is very
fast (20 ms), Furthermore, various optical interconnections necessary
for ATM switching networks can be achieved by beam deflectors of a liq
uid crystal microprism array, In this preliminary study, we fabricate
no more than eight-channel optical interconnections, However, since on
e surface emitting laser diode can have many channels in a small area
(64 channels per 4 mm, and the aperture of this adjustable liquid pris
m is wide (28 mm in diameter) and uniform, a huge number of optical in
terconnection channels will be is possible using this system.