D-Lightsys - Optical transceivers and parallel modules for severe environment

Transports

Within the transport cluster, we regroup terrestrial transport industries such as railways, merchant marine and automotive markets. Regarding the requirement for high data rate links, theses markets typically need video distribution, displays & sensors interconnects and local area networking.

Today needs requiring optical links largely correspond to non safety-critical applications such as infotainment in cars or trains. Within the automotive market, one can mention DVD optical links for passenger entertainment and Global Positioning System, which mainly consists of high speed data links to interconnect digital displays. For such applications, a few communications standards based on Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) have been set up with bit rate ranging from a few Mbps to 400Mbps (The Most, IDB1394…).

Now, such standards being mainly POF-based, they do not consider higher data rate applications. In addition, they are not suitable for “truly” harsh environments and safety critical applications such as sensors interconnects in the engine vicinity. D-Lightsys thus believes there is a large place in the transport and automotive industry for silica fiber-based data links (modules with >125°C operating temperature, hermetic packages, integrated devices…).

Of course, for such market, and particularly for automotive, cost is a major concern and one can naturally wonder if harsh environment solutions could remain reasonably low cost. D-Lightsys answer to this query is based on the use of VCSEL lasers, standard microelectronics packaging technologies and low cost multimode silica fibers.