Hard Plastic Cladding Fiber (HPCF) based optical components for high speed short reach optical communications

We developed the primary components applicable to HPCF links for short reach (SR) and very short reach (VSR) data communication systems. We fabricated 4×4 HPCF fused taper splitter, HPCF pigtailed VCSEL and PIN photodiode for high speed short reach communications and characterized back to back transmission performance of the link composed of these components by measuring eye diagrams and jitters. Adapting the fusion-tapering technique for glass optical fiber, we successfully fabricated a 4×4 HPCF fused taper coupler. The HPCF with a core diameter of 200μm and an outer diameter of 230μm had step refractive index of 1.45 and 1.40 for the core and the clad. The optimized fusion length and tapering waist which make minimum insertion loss of about 7dB and uniform output power splitting ratio with less than 0.5dB are 13mm and 150μm, respectively. As a light source for VSR networks, we chose a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) and developed a package with a HPCF pigtail. After positioning VCSEL and HPCF that made a minimum coupling loss, we glued the HPCF inside ceramic ferrule housing. In HPCF-PIN PD packaging, we added a micro polymer lens tip onto the HPCF ends to match the mode field area to the sensitive area of GaAs or InGaAs PIN PD. Coupling between a PIN PD chip and the lensed HPCF was optimized with the radius of curvature of 156μm with a low coupling loss of 0.3dB, which is compatible to conventional MMF-PD packaging. For 1.25 Gbps data rate, the eyes adequate to eye mask in gigabit Ethernet were wide open after all HPCF transmission link and no significant power penalty was observed.