Misalignment correction for optical interconnects using vertical cavity semiconductor optical amplifiers

In board-to-board optical interconnects, the misalignment between the board and the backplane connections can cause both optical loss and interchannel cross talk. A vertical cavity semiconductor optical amplifier (VCSOA) is proposed to correct optical misalignment in an optical connector between the board and the backplane. Angular or lateral misalignment can be corrected with the designed module. The correction ability is determined by the acceptance angle of the VCSOA, which was characterized to be 9.4° full angle at a 3 dB gain drop for a 30 μW optical signal at 1 GHz. The lateral misalignment correction ability is 0.16f, where f is the focal length of the mini lens to converge the input light onto the VCSOA.