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82 PCB007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2024 Next phase, -2l, will be 10Gb/s and then -4l (40 Gb/s). e upper limit may be -2048l sys- tems optronics (photonics), which has four levels of packaging: • Level 0: Optical Device Fabrication › Lens, filters, fibers, waveguides, chips, VCSELs, MEMs › Materials and semiconductor processing, deposition, patterning • Level 1: Component Assembly (Integrated O-E Devices) › Transmitters, receivers, lasers (two or more devices) › Sub-micron positioning, active alignment, bonding, welding • Level 2: Module and Board Assembly and Test › Optical amplifiers, mixed O-E, line cards, switches, ADM › Fiber splicing and management, connectorization, solder attach › Optical power, eye/mask test, BER, SONET frame • Level 3: System Assembly and Test › Optical backplanes, box-level test, network traffic e first optical backplanes are already in commercial use. Figure 3 shows the projected growth of the optical circuit board market. is projection was done by ElectroniCast of San Mateo, California. PCB007 References 1. Flexible Circuit Technology, 4th Edition, by Joe Fjelstad. 2. "Tech Talk #215: Optical Interconnects" by Karl Dietz, CircuiTree Magazine, March 2006. 3. "Waveguide and packaging technology for optical backplanes and hybrid electrical-optical circuit boards," by Henning Schröder, et all, SPIE, February 2006. Happy Holden has worked in printed circuit tech- nology since 1970 with Hewlett-Packard, NanYa Westwood, Merix, Foxconn, and Gentex. He is currently a contrib- uting technical editor with I-Connect007, and the author of Automation and Advanced Procedures in PCB Fabrication, and 24 Essential Skills for Engineers. To read past columns, click here.