Free space adaptive optical interconnect at 1.25 Gb/s, with beam steering using a ferroelectric liquid-crystal SLM

A free space adaptive optical interconnect is reported, in which an optically modulated channel from a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser at 1.25 Gb/s is steered using reconfigurable binary phase gratings displayed on a ferroelectric liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) spatial light modulator (SLM), to correct for misalignment. The optical system, and addressing scheme to maintain a transparent optical path, is described. The measured optical losses total 13.6 dB, sufficient to give a bit error rate (BER) of 10^-12 with current optical transmitter and receiver technology. This is, to our knowledge, the first demonstration of a high-speed data transmission through an adaptive optical interconnect using an "off-the-shelf" commercial ferroelectric display panel.