Evolution of Optical Interconnects
Optical Interconnects - Technologies and applications

Several technological challenges must be addressed to reduce costs and increase the viability of optical interconnects. Increasing transmission rates requires integrated and/or wavelength-multiplexed transmitters and receivers. Increased link parallelism is driving the development of VCSEL or micro-LED arrays, smart pixels (combining a transmitter and receiver on the same chip), and the use of fiber bundles or free-space interconnects. The need for integrated communication modules calls for the new techniques for alignment, assembly, encapsulation, and heterogeneous integration described below.