High-coupling-efficiency optical interconnection using a 90°-bent fiber array connector in optical printed circuit boards

A high-coupling-efficiency optical interconnection has been demonstrated using a 90°-bent fiber array connector to deflect beams between surface-emitting lasers or surface-receiving photodiodes and optical layers embedded in a board. A 90°-bent fiber array is mounted in a tetragonal body with a millimeter scale size to make it suitable for passive packaging in the board. The bending radius of silica fibers in the connector was controlled to have 1.5 mm resulting in bending loss of about 0.5 dB. An optical link of 2.5-Gb/s signals with a total interconnection loss of -1.3 dB was demonstrated using the connectors and a fiber-embedded board.