Recent advances in optoelectronic devices and in processing technology have focused attention on the packaging of multi-chip optoelectronic systems. Alignment tolerances and geometrical restrictions often make the implementation of free space optics within these systems quite difficult. Critical alignment issues also characterize fiber-per-channel guided wave systems based optical ribbon cable or large core fiber arrays. In this paper, we present an alternative architecture based on imaging fiber bundles that can deliver a set of spatial optical channels to and from the surface of an optoelectronic chip. In an imaging fiber bundle, each channel is carried by multiple fibers. An array of spots, such as shown in Figure 1, imaged at one end of the fiber bundle is correspondingly imaged on the opposite end. In this manner, imaging fiber bundles are capable of supporting the spatial parallelism of a free space interconnect with relaxed alignment and geometry constraints.
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