VCSEL-based smart pixels for free-space optical interconnection

High speed smart pixel arrays (SPAs) hold great promise as an enabling technology for board-to-board interconnections in digital systems. The SPAs are arrays of optoelectronic circuits for which each circuit possesses the property of signal processing and has an optical transmitter and receiver for I/O. This paper describes a VCSEL/Si smart pixel array technology developed at the University of Colorado, and reports on a free-space optical interconnect (FSOI) system that is based on these SPAs. This effort is unique in the processing complexity of the pixels, in the bi-directionality of the optical interconnects, and in the thermosonic bonding of the VCSEL and silicon chips