The target is the development of indusrial design and manufacturing technologies for hybrid electrical/optical printed circuit boards for switching equipment required for all optical Tbit/s and advanced metro systems in the telecommunication systems. One target is to replace such electrical interconnections by optical interco mections with bandwidth up to 10 Gbit/s in order to make obsolete the currently used demultiplexers and multiplexers. The optical interconnections will be build up with multimode waveguides as integrated structures of an optical layer (i.e. the waveguides are patterned in or on a foil or sheet of transparent material) laminated into the hybrid board. Interconnection structures for these interconnections within switching equipment are point-to-point interconnections on board-to-board level via backplanes with optical path length of about one meter. The main technologies and components required to reach the objective are: 1. Multimode waveguides inside an optical layers, which are integrated into printed circuit boards 2. Parallel optical transmitters and receivers 3. Optical connectors for board-to-backplane coupling Layout and simulation tools to design systems with hybrid boards. The electrical/optical hybrid PCBs require a technology for long integrated multimode waveguides with low losses in temperature resistant materials. The materials and thewaveguide structures within them must withstand pressure and temperatures of approximately 180°C to belaminated together with existing PCB materials and to withstand the soldering process.
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