COST, PERFORMANCE, AND RELIABILITY SIMULATOR FOR OPTICAL TRANSCEIVER MODULES

The program COUPLE combines simulators for optical performance, mechan ical reliability, and production cost under a graphical-user interface to design, simulate, and evaluate micro-optomechanical structures. Th e thermal simulator predicts the package temperature distribution on t he basis of the materials and the geometry as well as on heat sources, sinks, and boundary conditions. The thermal distribution is input to the mechanical simulator, which calculates the stresses or strains and displacements caused by differential thermal expansion. The optical s imulator predicts the impact on the optical efficiency and the cross t alk of mechanical and optical parameter variations such as solder heig hts, misalignments, and wavelength distributions. The cost simulator r epresents the manufacturing process dow and calculates the final cost and the cost sensitivity on basis of the cost and the yield of each pr ocess step. By means of balancing detector and coupling yield, cosimul ation from optical to cost domains determines the optimum detector siz e to produce the lowest-cost transceiver module. (C) 1998 Optical Soci ety of America.