Testing of optical transmitter and receiver modules

Details Testing of optical transmitter and receiver modules Testing of optical transmitter and receiver modules

1999-03-05

2001-07-10

Lee, John D. (Department: 2874)

Optical waveguides

Integrated optical circuit

C385S129000, C385S130000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06259832

ABSTRACT:

The present invention relates to testing optical transmitter and receiver modules.
BACKGROUND
Telecommunication systems using light propagating in different waveguides expand more and more today. There is a large interest in extending the optical networks even up to private homes or local business estates, the so called local access network which is also called “Fibre To (In/From) the Home”, “Fibre To (In/From) the Customer (Business)”, etc. Also, there is a large interest in extending the use of optical networks in LANs, i.e. local area networks, used for interconnecting computers in a business estate and furthermore for communication inside computer equipment and for communication between computers and peripheral devices such as printers etc. In order to achieve this expansion, the costs of the components of the optical networks of course have to be reduced as much as possible. Very important costs are related to producing the optical transmitter and receiver modules including lasers, LEDs, etc. and other active or passive devices. A part of these costs are in turn associated with testing finished optoelectrical modules which are to be mounted e.g. on printed circuit boards.
In conventional testing of optical modules manufactured at the surface of a substrate the respective optical device of a module is energized and the light is emitted in the case of an optical transmitter device and the electrical signals output from an optical receiver device are studied when injecting light into the receiver device. Such a method is disclosed in e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 5,631,571. General testing methods of electro-optic modules are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,631,759 and 5,546,325 and microlenses for injecting light for such testing is described in Tsai, Yang and Le, “A novel scheme for efficient excitation of high-density channel-waveguide array using ion-milled planar microlens array”, Optoelectronics, Devices and Technologies, Vol. 5, No. 2, December 1990, pp. 317-324.
SUMMARY
It is an object of the invention to provide a method of testing optical modules in a simple way that is suited to be integrated in a process for mass-fabrication of such modules.
The problem solved by the invention is that how to arrange optical modules when they are fabricated so that the testing thereof can be facilitated, in particular so that it can be automatically executed requiring a minimum amount of extra connection devices for supplying electrical power and for injecting light of an adapted intensity.
Thus, generally at least one optical transmission module and at least one optical reception module are fabricated on the same substrate. An optical connection, i.e. some optical waveguide, is arranged on the substrate between a light-emitting component in one module and a light-detecting component in another module. The light-emitting component and the light-detecting component are energized and the transmission is tested. Then the substrate is split into individual modules, the optical connection then being broken and the waveguide terminating at the edge of such module. There the waveguide can be connected to another optical waveguide such as an optical fiber by means of some connector.
The optocomponents on each module may be supplemented with electronic driver circuits mounted on the same module and on the module there may also be electric connections between the driver circuits and the optocomponents. The optical testing can then be made very rational involving a minimum of manual operations since substantially all transmitter and receiver modules can be tested at the same time in the same testing equipment. A substrate can comprise only a single pair of optical transmitter and receiver modules up to thousands of such pairs depending on the sizes of the transmitter and receiver devices and of the substrate.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the methods, processes, instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.


REFERENCES:
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patent: 5825951 (1998-10-01), Kitamura
Tsai et al., “A Novel Scheme for Efficient Excitation of High-Density Channel-Waveguide Array Using Ion-Milled Planar Microlens Array”, Optoelectronics, Devices and Technologies, vol. 5, No. 2, Dec. 1990, pp. 317-324.
Robertsson et al., “New Patternable Dielectric and Optical Materials For MCM-L/D-and o/e-MCM-packaging”, First IEEE Int. Symp. On Polymeric Electronics packaging, Oct. 26-30, 1997, Norrköping, Sweden.
Copy of Swedish Patent Application No. SE 9800757-8, “Optoelectric Multichip Module”.

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