It is shown how M/A-COM's proprietary silicon-glass technology (SGT) can be modified to satisfy the needs for microwave photonic packaging. At present, SGT is routinely used to produce commercial microwave multichip modules. Semiconductor devicesmounted on SGT can be interconnected with monolithically fabricated lumped and distributed elements. This allows a wide range of microwave circuit designs of varying production runs to be produced from the same foundry. The extension of SGT to microwavephotonic packaging is illustrated with optical transmitter and receiver circuits designed for SONET OC-12 applications. In addition, rudimentary fibre alignment grooves can be fabricated in the glass layer of SGT. In principle the advanced microwave interconnection features of SGT can be combined with passive alignment techniques developed for silicon. This may either be achieved with direct etching of V-grooves and microstop features on the silicon surface of anSGT circuit or by flip-chip mounting an SGT circuit on a conventional silicon optical waferboard. The end result would be a medium with all the existing advantages of silicon optical waferboard plus the added high-speed circuit functionality ofconventional SGT. The resultant microwave photonic multichip modules would then allow technologies where large quantities of low-cost transceivers are needed such as picocellular fibre radio, to be implemented.
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