Chip-to-chip Optical Data Communications using Polarization Division Multiplexing

Abstract

Short distance optical communication is challenging in significant part because the expense of constructing effective systems is high. We describe an optical data communication system that is designed to operate over very short distances (neighboring chips on a board) and is compatible with traditional CMOS fabrication, substantially decreasing the cost to build relative to previous approaches. Polarization division multiplexing is exploited to increase the achievable data rates.